First Witch
by keiranhalcyon2010
Summary: The world is dying. No one wants to admit it. Taylor awakens and opens her Eyes; meaningless death, conflict, war, but it all pales in the face of extinction. One neophyte parahuman may be all that stands in its way. (Alt!Taylor, AU)
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: In an totally non-serious effort to get back into a bit of writing. Credit to Wildbow for the awesomely imagined universe and story that is Worm. Certain descriptions are used from the Web Serial as this story goes past familiar locations and people, I put my own spin on it as much as possible whilst still keeping stuff recognizable. This is AU!, not just in story, certain powers and capes are still there, others are changed or completely cut out. Just in case, Nex Entertainment, Platinum Games and Sega own the license where Taylor's powers are inspired from, added with my own ideas, twists, logic and zanyness. _

**Chapter 1**

What does one do when faced with three people who fucked up your life at any opportunity they got?

Three teenage girls who had made it seemingly their personal mission to screw with you, sabotage you in school, bully you? Your first instinctual reply would be... fight back? But they were the popular ones, attractive ones, wearing angel's clothing to hide the rot beneath, and they were very careful not to get caught doing the truly bad stuff - like vandalizing my bag and so forth. They could even get away with some 'light' physical bullying, right in front of the teachers, who always wrote it off as the general roughhousing of teenagers.

Madison, Sophia and Emma. Where Madison was cute, Sophia and Emma were the types of girls that fit the 'prom queen' image. Sophia was dark skinned, with an athletic build she'd developed as a runner on the school track team. Red-headed Emma, by contrast, had all the curves and was good looking enough to get occasional jobs as an amateur model.

I was a waif, I had inherited a thin lipped, wide, expressive mouth from my mother, but my large eyes and my gawky figure made me look a lot more like my dad. My very long dark hair, the only feature I liked, was at the moment soaked with cranberry juice thanks to the latest ambush where they managed to track me down to the girls toilet , a place I went to so I could eat lunch in peace.

Yes, that was what I was reduced to. Yet any physical retaliation from me, I knew would instantly tar me with the brush of the bad girl, and get me reprimanded. Going through 'proper channels' or the legal route was out because again it devolved to their word against mine.

Colored blotches of purple, red and orange stained my brown hooded sweatshirt and green t-shirt. My glasses were beaded with the droplets of juice and soda. A drip ran down my nose and fell from the tip to land in the sink.

Using a paper towel from the dispenser, I wiped my glasses off and put them on again. The residual streaks made it just as hard to see, if not worse than it had been.

_Relax Taylor_, I told myself.

I pulled the glasses off to clean them again with a wet towel, and found the streaks were still there. A scream of fury and frustration escaped my lips, and I kicked the plastic bucket that sat just beneath the sink, it was torn to shreds from the sheer force, the pieces flying to slam into the walls to further destroy themselves on it. With a mighty effort I gained a rein on myself... it wouldn't do to tear the place apart. Oh yeah, as if that wasn't enough I could probably pulp and tear the heads off those bitches, and yeah I was a cape aka parahuman, but it was the same thing as if I was walking around with a loaded gun and that made the whole situation infinitely worse... and I wasn't the only parahuman on the planet.

It was as if the universe handed to me exactly what I wanted, yet couldn't use, because I wasn't a villain damn it. Not to mention my powers... which were if anyone was to look at my research journal about what I had discovered about them so far... pure bullshit. Undiluted physics breaking bullshit, yet I could do it.

So much for afternoon classes, I couldn't go into Art class looking like this and Sophia would be there, not when I felt like this... my frustration, my anger, my _hatred_ for those three girls was still boiling below the surface waiting for a trigger, which Sophia would as her nature poke at.

It would be so easy, to give the trio the hell back that they had put me through: the vicious e-mails, the trash they'd upended over my desk, the flute –my mother's flute– they'd stolen from my locker. It wasn't just them either. Other girls and a small handful of boys had joined in, 'accidentally' skipping over me when passing out assignment handouts, adding their own voices to the taunts and the flood of nasty emails, to get the favor and attention of three of the prettier and more popular girls in our grade.

But there were three things more powerful that stopped me; my dad, and the look of disappointment on his face as I was arrested by the heroes of the city (there were three teams and any number of independents in town), the memory of my mother and how she would have reacted, and finally, myself... my desire and goal to be a superhero and it would always work to calm myself down. It was what I used to make myself get out of bed on a school day. It was a crazy dream that made things tolerable. It was something to look forward to, something to work towards. It made it possible to keep from dwelling on the fact that Emma Barnes, leader of the trio, had once been my best friend.

I picked up my school bag and headed out of the bathroom, there was no one in the halls as afternoon classes were in session so I could head upstairs to another sanctuary I had. On the east side of the school was small staircase that had roof access, and only the janitor used it and all the access doors were locked. However, a measly lock was no barrier to me with my strength. So I broke just one in a manner that was not really too apparent, and with the slow wheels of school beauracracy and tight budget, it never got fixed. The small roof landing was my true sanctuary, and it was a place I knew the janitor had gifted me - hows that for you - in an entire school the lowly janitor was my only true ally - for it had been the same one who had found me in the worst day of my life when I had been trapped by Sophia in the locker.

We didn't talk, he just left notes when he had something to say, and it was always helpful - like whenever he overheard a new prank or bully tactic being planned.

I arrived and dropped my bag in a corner, where it landed next to a large duffle bag which contained my 'school clothes'. I pulled off my glasses, dropped them in the duffle and the world around me sharpened considerably to an extreme visual acuity. Then I promptly undressed to put the fouled clothes into the 'dirty clothes' section of the duffle. I sighed and unstrapped my barely needed bra, awkwardly stepped out of my underwear and at last I pulled off my trainers and socks.

I was suffused with a feeling of relief.

I sighed deeply and with a thought and flex of my power the world around me changed. I was still standing on the landing, but the colors were now hyper contrasted to my eyes and the edges of everything even sharper, sounds reach my ears with an extra sharp clarity - I could hear a nearby bug rubbing its feelers together. Satsified I walked to the roof door opened it and stepped out into the afternoon sun.

I was now in a world I called Subrosa - latin for beneath the rose - no real reason other than it sounded pretty and was somewhat apt . It was a world that mirrored reality - a level below, sideways, up... so to speak, there's no words really for it. In it, things were very different; people were shifting transparent forms instead of solid, the temperature was always the same with no fluctations between night and day, and while I could influence the real world from Subrosa, such as punch something, talk to someone, become invisible or not to them and so forth, I couldn't bring anything from the Real into Subrosa - anything - not even the cranberry juice that had stained my hair, was now completely gone, left in the Real. Hence the undressing, it was a world I could only walk in my birthday suit. After three months, I think I've pretty much become used to it.

My bare feet didn't protest at all at the very hot tarmac of the roof and I stepped up onto the edge of school building and looked down, seeing the shifting transparent forms of students walking in and out of Winslow High. My eyes turned to the Brockton Bay city skyline and the Atlantic ocean beyond before I simply stepped off the side of the building.

I smiled as I fell the five floors, exhilarating in somersaulting once and landing almost perfectly onto the grass, using my monstrous strength to absorb the fall through my legs. The lawn grass was rather badly depressed and crushed, but I paid it no mind as headed out onto the sidewalk street and began running home. I was careful to keep my concentration to remain intangible and invisible to the Real, but generally avoided running through people - as every time it happened, people would experience cold shivers and other similar symptoms.

I began to settle into my run towards home, delighting in the freedom and the wind running over every inch of my skin.

My stamina had improved by leaps and bounds over the past three months of my training routine, and with my long legs I ate up miles rather quickly. I was near Olympic level now for running a mile, (yes, I keep track) and my constitution and strength still felt like I was barely scratching the surface. I also loved the all over tan I had now. It was during the runs that I also really didn't mind having small breasts, I couldn't imagine tolerating them bouncing around every which way if they were larger.

My thoughts were on Emma on the run home. She had been my 'BFF' from grade one all the way through middle school. It hadn't been enough for us to spend our time together at school, so we had alternated staying at each others houses every weekend. I remember my mother saying that we were so close we were practically sisters.

A friendship that deep is intimate, in terms of a no-holds-barred sharing of every vulnerability and weakness.

So when I got back from nature camp just a week before our first year at high school started, to find that she wasn't talking to me? That she was calling Sophia her best friend? Discovering that she was now using every one of those secrets and vulnerabilities I had shared with her to wound me in the most vicious ways she could think of? It was crushing.

I was home in just under an hour in my estimation, I only re-entered the Real when I was standing in the backyard, which had high walls and enough shrubbery that I was concealed from every angle of the neighbors. I opened the hiding place for the house key, a loose wooden panel on the side of the garden shed, and let myself in.

I immediately headed for the upstairs shower and stood under the stream, luxuriating in getting the sweat off and cooling down even further. I enjoyed twenty minutes of blissful non-thinking and non-worrying before I stepped out and toweled off, dropping it into a laundry hamper before heading downstairs, through the kitchen and into the basement.

My house is old, and the basement was never renovated. The walls and floor are concrete and the ceiling was exposed boards and electrical cords. The furnace used to be coal fueled, and there was still an old coal chute, where the coal trucks used to come by to unload the winter's supply of coal for heating the house. The chute was boarded up, but around the time I was copying my original 'superpower notebook' over in code, I had decided to play it safe in all respects and start getting creative with my secrecy. It was then that I'd started using it.

I brought the book over to a disused workbench that the house's previous owner had left in our basement, then opened the windows that were at the same level as the driveway and front garden to let some fresh air in. I opened the book and perused the first chapter that generally covered my tests of my body's limits.

So far I hadn't found a limit to the amount of weight I could lift. I had scrounged together a set of makeshift ones using bricks and ropes and easily worked out with the equivalent of over four hundred pounds on each arm for a bicep curl. Somehow my thin arms and bicep muscles could do it... as I said, bullshit powers. My legs were the same story and my flexibility was insane now, above an Olympic gymnast and just short of a contortionist. I could stand on one leg and lift my other so my toes could touch my head and I could do the most difficult of yoga moves that existed. It also detailed some basic martial arts moves that I practiced very very carefully with my dad; palm strikes, kicks, and blocks to common attacks, ways to break out of holds and so on.

It had been a nightmare in the beginning after I had manifested the powers... my rather exasperated dad had to shell out a lot of money during that first month to repair the odd bits of the house I kept breaking - door handles and light switches mostly.

The second chapter covered Subrosa and explorations of that world, which made for a short chapter unfortunately, I had so far seen no one in that world like I was or anything uniquely native to it. So it was mostly about what I could influence in the Real from Subrosa. Dad had been a great help to discover how I could interact with people. I could appear as almost a glasslike ghostly version of myself to be seen and heard - though my voice sounded spookily distorted.

The third section covered easily the most bullshit ability I had - my hair. I counted it apart from my physical abilities. I could create a collosal amount of it and manipulate it as if it was a living part of me. The hair could also plunge into Subrosa, and emerge anywhere in the Real so long as it was still attached to my head and in my line of sight. So it would appear as if my hair would shoot into nothing and disappear near my body and emerge from seemingly right next to the target.

It was also clearly different from normal human hair, scissors couldn't cut it, and it was bulletproof if I made a 'hair' wall merely two millimeters thick. My dad had borrowed a fifty calibre pistol from one of his friends at work to test that one out, and I theorized I could stop even larger stuff, a tank gun, with thicker walls. Fire didn't do anything either as hair was notoriously easy and quick to burn away normally. It would be an awesome and flexible non-lethal takedown and combat option, though inevitably I also imagined many ways they could become lethal.

My fourth chapter covered a power that I had accidentally discovered and annoyingly could only use in the Real. It was a variation of the power a mercernary cape called Genesis had. With a flick or swish of a finger any object, animal or creature I imagined could be brought into being, no matter how bloody outlandish and alien it was. The catch was that I had to expend effort and 'power' for lack of a better word to keep it in existence and the larger the thing was the more power it took. I could make something handheld size and keep it in existence all day, the moment it got bigger though; I had once idly brought close to just under a thousand pounds of gym weights into existence to try and find my strength limit... only to nearly pass out from the sudden drain on me.

My dad had started to jokingly call it 'magical conjuring', happily shoving his old Dungeon and Dragons books under my nose and pointing at the School of Conjuring. A lot of the stuff in there were actually pretty good ideas (Mage armor, oh yeah), though quite a few were just ridiculously impossible for a 'conjuration' ability (Teleportation?) not to mention dangerous (Incendiary Cloud... good grief).

There was also the matter of just how to still travel and use the Subrosa. It was extremely useful as an escape route, travel and recon, yet every time I used it I would have to leave everything on me behind. I could conjure clothes in an emergency, but in any sort of situation or cape fight I would have no time to first get dressed before going into a fight. Conjuring the clothes directly on me was something I also didn't feel safe doing... what if a part of it appeared _in_ me, because I didn't imagine it properly and exactly and ended up severing an artery or something equally important.

My only solution thus far was quickly conjuring a full face white mask with gold ornamentation and become the only hero in the States who fights in her birthday suit; the Leader of The Guild, a hero team in Canada, a woman called Narwhal also did it, though she did use her force field powers to protect herself and cover herself in a layer of crystal... there was also a female supervillain called The Siberian who didn't even do that - I wasn't keen to imitate that monster of a woman, but I would if necessary. My embarrassment and society telling me that being nude in public was 'bad' versus saving a life, guess what won.

My fifth and last chapter, ways to hide my identity, strategies to fight using my hair, conjuring and strength. Not to mention all my research on the local capes in the city and general east US coast that I might encounter.

Then there was The Plan; how I would debut onto the cape scene. It was first to continue training for another month, then as the school year ended and summer began, would take the leap into the world of superheroics.

Today's experience had changed that. There was only so much you could learn, train in a predictable safe environment, it was time to get experience. Not to mention if I didn't let some steam off soon I feared I'd explode... and God help Brockton Bay.

I'd speak to dad... this weekend I would begin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

With the running part of my training schedule I had picked up a very good ground level knowledge of Brockton Bay. The fact that I always did it in the Subrosa meant I could go where few would dare to, even running through the bad parts of town. I'd never seen an actual crime in progress yet but as I ran in the mornings and late afternoons, that was not surprising.

Now it was Saturday night and I had spent most of Friday convincing my dad to allow this and most of Saturday morning going back and forth on the small details of how I wanted to present myself to the world.

So in the Subrosa I was just after midnight, and I was crossing the line between one of the nicest parts of town and the part of town where the crack whores and gangsters lived. The distance between the two was thinner than one might think.

The Boardwalk was where the tourists came. It ran north-to-south along the beach, there were shops that sold dresses for over a thousand dollars, cafes with ludicrously expensive coffees and stretches of wooden walkways and beaches where tourists could get a great view of the ocean. From pretty much any point on the Docks, you could see one of Brockton Bay's landmarks, the Protectorate Headquarters. It was a marvel of architectural design with its arches and towers, a floating base of operations that a squadron of local superheroes called home, outfitted with a forcefield bubble and a missile defense system. There had never been occasion for either to be used, but I had to admit, it made you feel safer.

If you headed west from the Boardwalk, away from the water, you found yourself in the area the locals just called the 'Docks'. When the import/export business in Brockton Bay had dried up, there had been a whole lot of people who were suddenly out of work. The richest and most resourceful people in town had managed to make more money, turning the city's resources towards tech and banking, but all of the people who had been employed on the ships and in the warehouses had few options left to them. They faced leaving Brockton Bay, sticking around while scraping up what little work they could or turning to more illicit activity.

This all contributed to the boom in the local supervillain population. The potential for big money coupled with the number of eager-to-please mooks and henchmen made it the city to be for the villains in the late 90s. It took a few years for the hero presence to establish and organize themselves, but they did, and there was something of an equilibrium now. As far as cape population went, Brockton Bay wasn't in the top 5 cities in the U.S., but it was probably in the top ten.

There weren't many lights on and I doubted many of the buildings had power. Being in Subrosa in the night allowed me to still see the shapes of things even in complete pitch darkness - so I could easily spot the cherry red light of a cigarette being drawn in the distance. The smoking man was not alone, he was followed by four others, all young men and when they walked into the only streetlight that was on for the immediate length of the road. They were Asian, some wearing hoodies, others wearing headbands or long sleeved shirts, but all wore the same colors. Red and green.

I knew these guys. 'Azn Bad Boys', ABB for short, scrawled their graffiti all over the East end of the city. More than a few went to my school. Typical gang members were just Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese forcibly recruited from Brockton Bay's high schools and lower class neighborhoods, and was led by a couple of people with powers.

Something about the way they walked made me follow them.

The smoker was clearly the leader of this little pack and it was confirmed when he began speaking, "Okay, I'm going to talk to the bitch, don't do anything until I give the go ahead."

That didn't sound good.

We walked for another two blocks and I spotted what had to be their goal.

Across the street at an intersection was a woman, clearly a prostitute from her dress (which was a sleezy crime against fashion), and the inviting looks she was giving any passerby. That look quickly turned to shock and panic at the sight of the ABB gang approaching her, but she made no move to run at all.

"Heya, Cheryl," the smoker greeted, blowing a puff into the air above his head nonchalantly.

"Sam," she replied nervously, tucking a lock of her curly red hair behind her ear.

"Can you take a good long guess as to why we're here?"

"Look Sam, business has been sluggish lately, I still need to put food on my table..."

"And a hungry, starving whore ain't good for business..." he agreed, "what's also bad for business is a whore ending up dead on the streets coz she didn't pay her protection money. Its what keeps ABB territory pimp free and allows you whores to manage your own affairs."

Movement in the dilapidated apartment building overlooking the street corner where the meeting was taking place drew my attention. I only saw it because I was still maintaining a distance from the ABB gang. In a darkened room and through the window from the first floor I saw the shape of man enter and a gun of some sort in his hand. As my head was looking up I saw another gunman across the street in another overlooking position... then not ten feet from me and on my right, was another slowly leopard crawling out from where he had been hidden under some tossed away cardboard boxes in the empty lot.

Shit. It was an ambush for the ABB. Either by another criminal or worst case scenario another gang... either the Merchants or the Empire 88. Now I was torn with indecision... if anything went down, and I helped the ABB, I could be pegged as a villain... or I could pre-emptively take down the gunmen with no one being the wiser. Which was a tough ask but possible.

My hair manipulation was something that could be done with me completely in Subrosa so I concentrated and my hair practically exploded in length and volume behind me before I got them into a coherent shape for what I needed.

That was when I saw the gunman in the lot take aim and I knew I had run out of time.

I imagined what it must look like to anyone in the Real.

A massive whirling black hand coming out of nowhere, bodily picking up the gunman and throwing him into the street so that he landed rather painfully - an Uzi clattered out of his hand as he tried to arrest his fall, the weapon went off, sending shots into the sky. The prostitute screamed in fright. The ABB drew their own guns and initially trained it on the first gunman, but whirled around when the crash of two windows on either side of the street reached their ears and startled screams.

"What the fuck?!"

Two whirling giant black hands pulled two more gunmen out into the air above the street, they screamed as they ineffectually tried to escape. The hands slammed into each other, giving the world's biggest fist bumb, exposing both gunmen to the deceleration force of a light car crash. The hands then put down the gunmen, pinching the weapons from their hands before crushing them into uselessness, then dissipated with odd wavy lines before vanishing.

I stood in the center of the clearing, reining my hair back in and waited for the aftermath.

"What the fuck? Sam?" said one of the gangers.

Sam the Smoker shook his head. "Definitely a cape, but thats a power I never heard of before... can't see anyone. That's worrying. Check em."

A ganger went over to the first gunman, "Not sure boss, might be the Merchants, given he's black. E88 won't be stupid enough to do this and the Nazis don't even hire black mooks."

"I'm more interested in the fact that we were ambushed." He lit a new cigarette. "Cheryl, you wouldn't have happened to know something about that?" Cheryl was still lying, half-sitting on the sidewalk pavement and clearly in shock, given her blank stare. "Cheryl!"

"No, no... nothing, they must have been watching and waiting..."

"Maybe, but its rather well known that I'm the chief enforcer for these blocks," he paused for a moment to take another drag, "you're usually prompt with your protection payments, Cheryl."

"I told you business is slow, Sam."

"All the other whores in my blocks are doing quite well enough to pay, and you're the hottest of em all Cheryl... no no no..." he waved an admonishing finger. "I think they convinced you to withhold the payment, knowing it would draw me out right smack into their little ambush."

Cheryl hung her head and started sobbing, "They... came a few days ago, threatened to make my brother watch while they gang raped me then kill him."

"Definitely Merchants," one of the ABB gangers nodded.

"Fuck," Sam sighed. "Is it these guys that did the threatening?" Cheryl shook her head. "Disposable deniable mooks then."

"Please... they still have my brother..."

"Not my problem, Cheryl," Sam puffed another drag, "I got to bump word of this ambush up the chain. C'ya babe." Sam walked away with his gang in tow, pulling out a cellphone, leaving Cheryl right where she was.

I was shocked and yet in hindsight shouldn't have been. It is one thing to hear of the mean, rough and even deadly streets and the criminal underworld, seeing it person was totally different.

"Please!" she shouted now looking wildly around, "Help!"

It smacked me like a bat over the head, her plea hadn't been to Sam at all, but _me_... she knew a cape had to be in area. It was like the decision had been made all along... as if my will just said 'Fuck it, we're doing this NOW'... my feet carried me to stand behind the sobbing woman, I used my hair to shield my face as I stepped back into the Real, a soft flick of fingers and I had the white gold mask in my hand and secured it quickly to my head. Nerves prickled along my spine, but I ploughed ahead, reducing my hair to more normalized level, but kept it flared behind me like angel wings, standing with slightly widened legs, hands resting on my hips.

I coughed nervously, "You called?" She whirled around giving a brief scream of fright at my appearance before once again shock settled on her. "Cheryl?!"

"Y-yes, th-that was you with the hands thing?"

"Yes, but before I help you further, you have a cell?" She nodded. "Good, call the cops." My hair exploded into being again, snaking out to the unconscious gunmen, wrapping all three up, lifting them and pulling them in, depositing them neatly in a heap in front of me. With my hair as dexterous as my fingers I searched them, producing sachets of drugs, holdout revolvers and a few hundred dollars all together between them, another tentacle of hair brought me the Uzi. All the loot was deposited in a neat pile.

I looked to Cheryl and saw she was simply staring at the spectacle slack jawed, with her phone in her hand. I left her alone for a moment, pulling the pants off each gunman and tore them up, multiple tendrils then took the strips, tying them using a sailor knots I had learned for just such an occasion, then the newly made rope was looped and tied around each criminal. The end result was not as neat as I wanted, but it did the job, they wouldn't be going anywhere. Hair tendrils picked them up and dumped them on the sidewalk, before putting every bit of incriminating evidence back in their possession.

Some intelligence had come back to her features as she had watched, her adrenaline clearly wearing off. She dialed the cops and basically just reported that a cape had prevented a gang ambush and the ambushers were unconscious and waiting for a pick up.

"Hang on," she said into the phone, putting her hand over the speaker. "Uh, the BBPD wants your name..."

Many capes chose a name that reflected their powers in some way. It bound their identity with their power and I didn't want to go down that path with my cape persona... rather a name that resonated to me personally from history and it was rather fitting.

"Godiva. It wont be on their database... I'm new."

She relayed that, agreed a few times with the dispatch officer on the other end then hung up. "Seriously, you're a rookie? And you can do all that?"

I waved impatiently, "Yes, now where is your brother being held? Those guys might have a check-in time."

"In my apartment, its about ten minutes away on foot."

"Lead the way, I'll follow but you wont see me," I turned around dismissed my mask from existence and entered the Subrosa.

Cheryl gasped as I just vanished into nothingness, I cast my voice into the Real, "I'm still here, go."

She hesitantly started to stride away taking a street heading west. Barely a few hundred yards later she loudly whispered, "You there?"

"Yes. I'm not going to leave you high and dry, Cheryl."

"Figured you for a hero," she muttered. "Why does your voice sound so weird?"

"Can't be helped, side effect of being invisible." One thing the general concensus from cape gurus was that you should never truly explain your powers, what you did and didn't know about them. It was always wise to have an ace up the sleeve and to misdirect everyone about your abilities if possible.

"Okay and the nudity?"

"Same story," I said shortly.

"Oh, like the Invisible Woman... only you don't have a convenient figure hugging plot-enium suit that goes invisible too."

"Yeah."

"Why don't you use the hair then to cover yourself?"

"I have to use a lot to create those hands and tendrils, add the distance to the target and the complexity... I just can't spare the hair or the concentration to worry about it, I'd be nude at that point anyway..."

"Oh well, for what its worth you've got all the right proportions to be real looker in the future, and some guys dig skinny girls."

I'm glad she couldn't see me at that point, coz I'm sure I was doing an fine imitation of a tomato.

* * *

><p>It turned out that her apartment was actually in a semi-functional building that was near to the border of what was considered the Docks and the 'east side'. It had power and running water at least, but other than that there wasn't much going for it. It was dilapidated, everything needed a new coat of paint, the elevators weren't working and it was over ten floors in height. It was nominally ABB territory, but any gang's territory was generally an ephemeral thing, they couldn't control who came and went... it was generally measured to where the money was flowing. Hence, while it was dangerous, any of the gangs could walk around in their rival's territory, as long as they didn't openly wear colors and try to muscle in on the money flow.<p>

The Merchants, like the E88 and ABB, were led by capes. The top dog being Skidmark, who could create forcefields that pushes anything through itself or pushed them away. Depending on how he could control those fields I imagined he could be very deadly in a direct confrontation. His second in command was a Tinker called Squealer, who specialized in vehicles - and could bring very heavy vehicular firepower and support to any situation the Merchants got involved in.

I stopped Cheryl from stepping into view of her apartment building, pulling her into the shadows cast by a graffiti'd bus stop shelter.

"Why..."

"They might have lookouts, you arriving will make them more alert to trouble. I'll recon, see what's going on. Then get your brother out of there, one way or another." She nodded reluctantly. "Get ready to phone the police again in case things go south."

"Uh, define go south..."

"You'll know it when you see it."

"Just please try not to wreck the apartment."

I winced, "I can't promise anything, but I'll try."

Walking inside the building I was so glad I was in Subrosa, as smells didn't mirror at all, and the air I breathed here was not the air of the Real. I could only imagine the smell coming off the piles of garbage dumped beneath the stairs, and a look down the busted elevator shaft whose doors were askew, showed it was another dumping ground. I shuddered and headed up the stairs, passing an occasional resident going up or down. The building was also echoing with the sounds of people arguing, blaring televisions, and even a party if I wasn't mistaken.

I got off on the sixth floor landing and headed out into a long hallway stretching the entire width of the building. I turned right and started counting the doors on the left side as Cheryl had told me... one, two, three, passed the boarded up door, four, five... and the next door was her apartment.

The door was firmly shut of course and it had no peep hole, but there were usually simple ways to remedy that. I stepped to the side, flattening against the wall next to the door and knocked firmly three times. A few seconds passed and the door was opened fractionally. I saw a sliver of a male face, trying to see who had knocked. Then the door was thrown open abruptly and the pump action shotgun the goon carried was pointed out, he scanned left and right down the hall.

This allowed me to walk right through the guy...who predictably shivered as it happened.

The apartment was basically furnished with only the odd occasional luxury item that probably had been saved up for or bought when Cheryl had a windfall earning with a wealthy client. Seated on the sofa were two scruffy looking men in jeans and shirts, busy commenting and alternately shouting at a football game on they were watching on the television, both were armed with high caliber pistols. The door slammed shut and the shotgun wielding Merchant returned to take a seat on a small bar stool that had been brought from the kitchen.

"Stupid kids," he muttered. Oh so he thought it was a childish knock prank.

I carefully maneuvered through the apartment down a small hall with two adjoining doors, one led to bathroom, the other a bedroom...

Shit.

Cheryl's brother, Jake, looked barely old enough to be in middle school and he was miserably lying on the bed with his back to the door and wiping away tears from his eyes.

I heard the door knock. I really hoped it wasn't Cheryl.

"Fucking kids!" the Merchant declared, walking back to the door and out of my view.

Then all hell broke loose.

The door slammed, I heard a scream, something wet splattering against the floor, then a shotgun blast that within the confines of the apartment sounded like a bomb.

Both Merchants on the sofa rose, bringing their pistols to bear, shooting at the front door to the apartment.

It was all happening so fast... I felt my hair explode in volume and size behind me...

Then behind the two Merchants a man popped into existence, wearing a black bodysuit with belts, bandoleers of knives on it and a demonic mask with leering, fanged, ear-to-ear grin. The man viciously and with a surgical precision, stabbed the Merchant in the back of the neck, practically danced around the body before it could even fall to the ground and slashed the throat of the third Merchant.

Then my brain clicked who this was... this was an ABB Lieutenant called Oni Lee, who could teleport or create doubles of himself – I wasn't a hundred percent sure on the details.

Lee idly watched the Merchants bleed themselves out onto the floor, wiping his blades with a fine cloth he produced from a pocket on his bodysuit. Then he abruptly looked directly at me, and for a panicked moment I thought he could see me, but then I realized...

"No witnesses," Lee hissed. Cheryl's brother was standing numbly behind me.

I hurled myself forward and into the hallway and formed a barrier of hair two centimeters thick to seal the doorway.

Oni Lee startled at the sudden writhing black mass that had come out of nowhere. He ran forward and slashed at the barrier, then stabbing it when that proved ineffectual - which only broke his elegant knife. I wondered for a moment why he wasn't simply teleporting through...

He needs line of sight!

I saw another Oni Lee through the window, appearing briefly in the sky outside the apartment...

I jumped through my hair as the Oni Lee that had been standing there crumbled to ashes and tried to raise another barrier to stop his line of sight... too late.

Another Oni Lee appeared on the opposite side of the bed...

Jake screamed in fright throwing himself backward out of the bedroom, I let him through my hair barrier sealed it back up then completed the window barrier.

Oni Lee reached into his bandoleer and pulled a grenade out of it.

_Oh fuck no_, I thought.

Going on the offense, a hair tendril wrapped around the arm holding the grenade and squeezed.

Oni Lee's scream made me realize I had not measured the strength of the tendril properly in my haste. Three tendrils wrapped around his remaining limbs and...

Another Oni Lee popped into the room, again reaching for the grenade.

_Stupid_, he still had line of sight in the room.

This time I had five tendrils shoot out and spread eagle the villain, the last tendril wrapping around his head to cover his eyes.

The previous Oni Lee crumbled to ash ten seconds later.

Not willing to take any more chances I practically mummified Lee in my hair. I felt him trying to use strength to get out, and constricted my hair tighter in response. I also made sure to leave a gap on the hair constriction around his mouth so he could still breathe.

I dropped the hair barriers and saw no sign of Jake... clever boy.

* * *

><p>I met Cheryl in the apartment building lobby. It said something about the place that a triple murder could take place and not a soul in the building had stirred. She was busy comforting her now sobbing brother - who clearly couldn't give a shit now whether or not he openly cried or not. Didn't blame the poor kid. Its not every day you face down someone like Oni Lee... I myself was still shaking from the adrenaline rush the encounter had provoked.<p>

Cheryl gaped at the black cocoon seemingly floating with a masked mouth exposed, breathing and occasionally swearing coming from it in Chinese.

"Uh, Godiva..."

"O - oni Lee sh-showed up to take care of the Merchants, it happened so quickly I couldn't stop their deaths..." I wouldn't be forgetting that wet sound of blood splatter... ever. Nor the sight of the first Merchant with the shotgun... Oni Lee had first delivered a disemboweling slash before stabbing the man through the bottom of his chin and directly into the brain. "He was going to kill Jake too for witnessing it, and try to blow up grenades to get through me... but I managed to stop him."

"Holy shit... you took down Oni Lee... are you even sure its the real him?"

I nodded, "His power works by line of sight, and his teleport clones only lasts for ten to fifteen seconds..._this_ Oni Lee has been blinded and encased for five or so minutes already. In any event, call the police and ask for the Protectorate to get over here so they can take him off my hands, please."

That took nearly eighteen nervous minutes after the call was made. I really hope Oni Lee didn't have check in times and back-up.

At last first heard then saw the Protectorate cape arrive on a souped up motorcycle with a number of armored vehicles in tow. The doors to the lobby opened. A man entered wearing what could only be Tinker made armor, dark blue with silver highlights, had a sharply angled v-shaped visor covering his eyes and nose. With only the lower half of his face exposed, I could see a beard trimmed to trace the edges of his jaw. If I had to judge, with only the lower half of his face to go by, I'd guess he was in his late twenties or early thirties, and he was armed with a six foot tall Halberd.

So this was what Armsmaster looked like in person, I thought.

The largest superhero organization in the world was the Protectorate, spanning Canada and the States, with ongoing talks about including Mexico in the deal. It was a government sponsored league of superheroes with a base in each city with a sizable population of heroes and villains. Brockton Bay's team was officially 'The Protectorate East-North-East', and were headquartered in the floating, forcefield-shrouded island that you could see from the Boardwalk. This guy, Armsmaster, was the guy in charge of the local team. When the core group of the top Protectorate members from around Canada and the States assembled in that classic 'v' formation for the photo shoots, Armsmaster was one of the guys in the wings. This was a guy who had his own action figures.

His trademark and weapon was his Halberd, which was basically a spear with an axe head on the end, crammed with gadgets and the kind of technology you generally only saw in science fiction. He was the kind of guy who appeared on magazine covers and did interviews on TV, so you could find almost anything about Armsmaster through various media, short of his secret identity. I knew his weapon could cut through steel as though it was butter, that it had plasma injectors for stuff that the blade alone couldn't cut and that he could fire off directed electromagnetic pulses to shut down forcefields and mechanical devices.

He was followed by a five man team of men who looked like they could be Police SWAT on steroids, but their body armor was marked 'PRT' and the various gadgets and weapons they carried was most decidely not BBPD issue, more like they had stepped out of a sci-fi movie.

Armsmaster looked at the cocooned Oni Lee for a long moment then turned to Cheryl.

"You called this in?"

"Uh, yes s-sir." She was both a little star struck and intimidated, so was I for that matter.

"Geofrey, Watkins, O'Neill secure the apartment." He tapped his helmet. "Forensic team get ready to move once the scene is secured." Three of the PRT officers hurried up the stairs, their glowing weapons shouldered and ready.

"Your name is Cheryl Landau? The same one who reported the shooting on Barkley and East First street?"

"Yes."

He turned to survey the lobby again. "Godiva? Are you here?"

"Here," I replied.

His head turned toward my position unerringly... so he had sound triangulation in that helmet of his? "How much longer can you keep Oni Lee encased?"

"Until I have to sleep," I replied and saw him relax slightly.

"How soundproof is your hair?"

"Not sure... I'll thicken the amount around his ears..." and promptly did so.

Armsmaster watched as the process intently. "Hmmm, good. Can you give me your statements? My helmet will record everything you say."

Cheryl rehashed her story of the Merchants cornering her, forcing her to withhold the protection money from the ABB, to draw out Sam into an ambush while they held her younger brother hostage. At my turn I gave my perspective, the killing of the Merchants and the brief fight with Oni Lee.

Armsmaster gave a smile, "Amazing, he's the most elusive villain and a bastard to fight. That is a very versatile Changer power you have there added to very high level Stranger, I've scanned every bit of the visual spectrum, even gone up and down the EM spectrum and you're just _not there_. Are you aware of the classifications?"

"Yes, I've done my homework." Changers were obviously anyone who could effect changes to their own body in various ways, while a Stranger was any ability that bypassed defenses and allowed infiltration, espionage and so forth.

"Good, since you're new on the block, I need to add your cape appearance at least to the database for future incidents you're involved in and the associated legalese and so forth, so..."

I gulped nervously, in the past I could've deluded myself somewhat that I was used to my nudity in front of others, and Cheryl's reaction was a plus, but the Subrosa was a safety blanket.

I turned around so my back was facing Armsmaster, then pulled some hair away from Oni Lee's feet to get he necessary volume of hair, which I let snake down on either side of my neck to cover my chest and continue down to between my legs. The only reason I was doing was because if this was going on a database and maybe even eventually on the Internet then it had to be 'permissible for viewing'. I emerged back into the Real, my mask conjured out of sight and I quickly put it on. Then turned around.

Armsmaster made a thoughtful noise and I think I stunned the remaining PRT agents... given how they flinched slightly, but that was all.

"You can only make your body itself invisible, nothing physical on you?"

"Yes," I shrugged. "Got your image?" He nodded and I promptly removed the hair tendrils from my body to slap them back on Lee.

He chuckled, and it sounded warm, very normal, "I applaud your dedication to not giving Lee an inch, and your cape name now makes perfect sense." The PRT agents were now standing very uncomfortably. His response was like balm on my nerves. "Procedure compels me to offer you Ward membership, but I really don't want to imagine what the addition of you to a bunch of hormonal teenager capes could lead to."

The Wards were the under-eighteen subdivision of the Protectorate, and Brockton Bay did have its own team of Wards. I had considered applying to join, but the Wards would just be like throwing more fuel onto the fire – I needed to get away from teen angst, schedules, procedures and it was part of the system that had failed me. I also understood the underlying message Armsmaster was trying to send - he really would like me to join but given the issue with using my powers he didn't think it wise.

"So instead I'm going to give you my card," he handed over a profesionally printed official looking business card, with his name and number. "Call me day or night if you ever need help, advice, even a bit of informal training might not be out of the realms of possibility, sort of an unofficial mentor if you accept."

I took the card, feeling part elated and vindicated... Armsmaster... my freakin mentor! "I accept."

"Good, now my first bit of advise... you took a huge step today, bagging one of ABB's top Lieutenants, they'll be gunning for you, now continue with baby steps. You're an independent hero, and under eighteen, and the statistics are against you surviving. Now normally I'd be pressing harder to pull you into the Wards to protect you, but that Stranger power of yours should do the job. You can dictate the terms of any engagement, but also be wary of traps they might set to lure you in. Got it?" I only nodded taking in every word. He looked to the side, "Okay, we're ready to take over custody of Oni Lee."

The procedure for doing that was a bit complicated. I moved the captured Oni Lee outside to a special PRT truck that had arrived. Then manuever the villain so Armsmaster could stand behind him, ready with a sensory deprivation bag, which would cover Lee's head completely. It would not only cut off all light, but sound as well. So I carefully removed my hair around Lee's face, leaving only a tendril around the eyes, allowing Armsmaster to pull the bag down and hold it there - I removed the last tendril and the bag was doing all the work.

Next came three PRT officers who carried hoses from the truck and surrounded Oni Lee. I was given a countdown and then removed the cocoon completely to let the villian fall to the ground. The next instant Lee was hosed, not with water, but with a special Tinker designed containment foam that hardened instantly when exposed to air and clung like superglue to anything it touched. The PRT used it generally against Brute villains, but Oni Lee's rep was guaranteeing no chances were being taken at all.

With that I was free to go.

I said my goodbyes to Cheryl and Jake...

"You're pretty hot, can I get your autograph?" Jake eagerly produced for me a pen and a card.

Cheryl laughed heartily. Now I was thankful I had my mask, but I was sure my blush was showing all over my neck and chest. I signed quickly and handed it back.

"Okay, you've had enough looking at the naked girl, off you go," she slapped her brother upside the head and directed him to head back into the building where the PRT was already busy with cleaning up their apartment.

"Take care of yourself out there, okay? That autograph better be worth something someday." We hugged briefly.

"I'll try."

"I've also seemingly gone selectively blind and deaf, so I never saw or heard much," she smiled at me and walked off, idly waving.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Danny Hebert sighed and sat down on the bed, only to stand just a moment later and resume pacing.

Nothing he was doing seem to get rid of the worry and nerves he felt, that was robbing him of sleep. Not even watching the Scion documentary about the public emergence of the first superhero (something he had seen dozens of times) succeeded in curing his insomnia.

It was three in the morning and his daughter was not back yet from her first ever patrol, which according to the schedule and route they had drawn up together, meant that something had happened. Danny ran his hands through his thinning hair which was creeping ever closer to baldness.

The only thing that helped balm his intense worry was going through his 'santized' copy of her hero journal. Everything in it meant that she should would be fine, but it was a big unpredicatable world out there... nothing was certain.

For the twentieth time, he felt the urge to ask his wife for help, for advice, for support. But her side of the bed was empty and it had been for some time. Daily, it seemed, he was struck by the urge to call her cell phone. He knew it was stupid – she wouldn't pick up – and if he dwelt on that for too long, he became angry at her, which just made him feel worse.

Most father's would rail against the thought of their teenage daughter going out into the dark night to fight the evils of the world, especially in the manner Taylor did. But he knew that if he forbade her, she would just do it behind his back - and given her powers, she could do it easily. This way he could be the support, 'the adult', the measure of reason to temper the fires of eager youth - as his wife would've said.

The truth was he knew she needed this outlet to stay sane and 'hero'. Taylor wasn't social. She didn't go to parties, she wouldn't drink, she wasn't even that interested in champagne when they celebrated the New Year together. Taylor was also being bullied. Danny had found that out in January, when his little girl had been pulled out of school and taken to the hospital. Not the emergency room, but the psychiatric ward.

He had threatened to sue the school after his daughter had been taken to the hospital, and the school board had responded by settling, paying her hospital bills and promising they would look out for her to prevent such events from occurring in the future. It was a feeble promise made by a chronically overworked staff and it didn't do a thing to ease his worries.

It had taken over a month before Taylor came clean with him on the identity of her primary bullies and the other bullies that rode on their wake, and the thought of that made him wish he was a Brute cape of epic proportions, just so he could smash those little _bitches_ for daring to attack his daughter's spirit.

Nothing 'official' he had tried could get her away from those vicious girls and Winslow. His efforts to have her change schools had been stubbornly countered with rules and regulations about the maximum travel times a student was allowed to have between home and a given school. The only other school within a reasonable distance of Taylor's place of residence was Arcadia High, and it was already desperately overcrowded with more than two hundred students on a list requesting admittance.

The slightest of vibrations in the house marked the escape of the warm air in the house to the cold outdoors, and there was a muffled whoosh as the kitchen door shut again. Danny Hebert felt a thrill of relief, as his daughter called out, "Dad, I'm home."

He wouldn't admit later that he had rushed out of his room and ran downstairs.

As he entered the kitchen he was greeted with the sight of Taylor slumped in a chair at the dinner table, using another chair as support for her legs, her long hair trailing onto the floor behind her, a glass of milk in one hand, while another removed her white gold mask to place it on the table. She had no bruises and injuries whatsoever, about the only time he was thankful for the nudity quirk of her Stranger power - she would never be able to hide an injury. He gave her an awkward hug given that she clearly didn't want to get up and took a seat across from her.

"Morning Tay, how'd it go? Please ease an old man's worries."

She rolled her eyes, "It went fine, dad." And proceeded to wow him with what had to be a near flawless debut... though the thought of his daughter being exposed to the brutal murder of those Merchants plagued him. It also eased his worry somewhat that she had the attention of a cape like Armsmaster, who could guide her professionally.

There had been many occasions in the past three months as he helped her with her training and exploration of her powers that he had felt that they were grasping at straws and barely keeping their heads above the water.

"Okay, you get yourself in a shower then bed, no alarm clock, you're sleeping in as its Sunday, screw the routine."

"Dad..." she complained.

"Nope, off you go."

* * *

><p>Colin stood at attention in front of the Director's desk as she read his after action report. Not that there had been much action at all, but there was no official 'mop up' report, which was all that the Oni Lee apprehension had been. He wished he had his armor on as his social analysis and body language programs would've had a lot to say about the Director's thoughts.<p>

Emily Piggot was someone he respected for her position and personal fortitude in the face of the challenges she had had in her PRT career, but he did not like her. She was a heavyset seemingly obese woman that ruled over PRT ENE with a barely softened iron fist. Her weight was not a condition of personal choice in overeating but the result of the long term legacy left on her of injuries sustained in the line of duty. She had been fully fit agent and boots on the ground in Ellisburg and had faced the twisted horrific creations of the cape Nillbog personally - that was all he had been able to determine, so much of that day had been classified and blacked out in the PRT databases. He did not like her personally because only a blind idiot could miss the barely veiled bigotry she harboured for capes, but to her credit he hadn't seen it effect her decision making so far.

Piggot switched the computer tablet off and dropped it on her desk, "Oni Lee is completely secure downstairs?"

"Black bagged, low level Brute restraints, strip searched and scanned – had to remove quite a few escape assists he had secreted inside his own body. Even if he managed to teleport, he'd continue to duplicate everything he has on his body," Colin explained.

Piggot turned to a computer screen behind her where an utterly ordinary looking unremarkable woman's face was displayed, "Dragon, have you got something in the Birdcage that would prevent Oni Lee from assassinating everyone in the place."

The world's premiere Tinker shook her head on the screen, "I doubt that Oni Lee would be able to have such an impact, given the powers of the villains in detention there. He is just a normal human in terms of strength and durability at the end of the day, if extremely well trained. As Godiva determined in her encounter with him, he needs line of sight to teleport anywhere so I will design a set of permanent glasses that we will affix to his skull over his eye sockets. If it detects another version of itself within radio range it will immediately polarize, robbing Oni Lee of vision for any period of time programmed into it. I can also set up a monitoring program that will allow him the use of his teleportation if he is in mortal danger from another inmate."

"Excellent, good work," Piggot nodded. "Okay, now what impact will this have on the ABB?"

"Without Oni Lee it removes their ability to near instantly respond to threats to their territory, and the rival gangs will sleep a lot easier in their beds, perhaps even bold enough to try muscling in on territory more overtly. Countering this is that there is a high probability that one of Lung's new parahuman recruits will fill the void left; Bakuda," Dragon scowled as she said the name.

Colin winced at the mere thought. Bakuda was a Tinker like he was, but one that was specialized in making bombs and explosives. If that wasn't bad enough, coupled with the manias and obsessions that went with being a Tinker, her fall to villainy was all but assured. When she had finally snapped she held the entire Cornell University hostage for daring to refuse her work and pull her funding.

Piggot shook her head, "Going from a sociopathic near-unstoppable assassin to a mad Tinker who builds futuristic bombs, I'm not sure I like this trade."

"Lung will also at least try to free Oni Lee," Dragon explained, "if only to save face and reacquire Oni Lee as an asset, I will make the necessary precautions and RC a few battlesuits to escort the convoy."

"Good. Now lets talk about Godiva. Initial assessment?"

"My initial opinion Stranger-Breaker 10, Changer-Shaker 6, " Colin declared.

Piggot stared fixedly with wide open eyes at him for a long moment, this he knew was the only way she expressed astonishment openly. "Explain."

"The only way I could track her actual position was when she deliberately spoke, otherwise she's just impossible to detect, and I scanned the whole EM spectrum for her. So I thought sound might be a way, the audio pickups on my armor can detect the sound of a heartbeat within twenty feet and I heard nothing. So unless she deliberately makes a sound it seems, she remains undetectable. She could be in this room and we wouldn't know. I can only theorize that this Stranger ability is utilizing either phasing or dimensional shift, which would also make it a Breaker power."

"Stranger protocols would then be potentially useless against her," Piggot sighed rubbing her face. "Okay, Changer Shaker 6, why so high?"

"Ordinarily I'd make controlling hair be lower on the scale, but since she can grow it to such proportions, volume and with the fine control she has. Then there's the strength of the hair when weaved together at that density is also much higher than is natural, there's also a Breaker aspect to the power as she wasn't effected by leverage using her hair to hoist the heavier Oni Lee into the air. The hair can also affect the flow of a battle, either stopping it with no casualties, or she could potentially use it to injure and kill multiple people at once, all this pushes it higher on the scale."

"In addition I believe another power she has is a preliminary low level Shaker-Tinker; the mask she wore, I recorded the faint sound of her flicking her fingers, and given the apparent fact that she can't take anything outside her own body into invisibility."

"Ah, so she has a creation ability," Piggot nodded in understanding.

"When I realized what I had seen I scanned the mask thoroughly, it registered as a ceramic and the gold frilling was actual pure gold," Colin explained feeling inwardly excited – if Godiva could create such a heavy element so quickly, then the applications of just that part of her power were near limitless; add it all together with experience and more training he could easily see her reaching A-list and even higher one day.

Piggot wasn't stupid and could clearly see it too. "In any event, I approve of your coaxing to keep her away from the Wards and remain an independent hero. I wouldn't have approved her, given her... Stranger power's peculiarity, the male dominated Ward team we have, not to mention the potential PR problems. When she reaches her majority by then her rep might be good enough to address the PR issue and she can get Protectorate membership. When you brief the Wards on her, tell them I expect full professionalism if they encounter her in the field; no gawking, giggling, mocking or anything that will potentially dissuade her from joining the Protectorate. Remind them that she took down Oni Lee relatively easily. Oh, when you meet with her, make sure your training goes unobserved."

"Yes, Director."

* * *

><p>I woke late on Sunday morning as instructed by dad and already felt guilty for skimping on my schedule. So after gulping down breakfast headed down into the basement to at least do my yoga training for extra long to make up for missing my run. I then turned to my journal to practice my conjuring.<p>

This mostly involved visualization exercises and then flicking my fingers to create whatever I imagined – in this case, a simple brick. The trick was I was trying to create the brick as far from my body as possible with precision. It was also practical – bad guy runs away, a brick conveniently appears from nowhere to trip him up, and my hair has the time to snap him up.

After nearly two months since I discovered I could do this I was able to create anywhere within the basement in my line of sight and if I had a good enough idea of my surroundings, even outside it.

My biggest problem in using it in combat was the time needed... if I didn't visualize properly, either nothing happened or what came out was unfinished. Which would be disastrous or even deadly with some of the conjurations I had planned to try and master.

Sunday proceeded uneventfully and the familiar dread of school settled over me again like some ugly blanket. About the only thing to look forward to was seeing the fallout my cape debut was having on the net.

The next morning I awoke at half past six for my run and breakfast, which always helped to properly wake me up. As I dressed for school, I realized I was feeling a distinct distaste for my clothes and underwear, it was so... constricting, uncomfortable, especially jeans and bra straps on a hot day, being nude felt... good. But I had to soldier on, so I got in my usual attire of shoes, slacks, shirt and turtleneck and headed off to school on the bus.

I felt anxious as I made my way to Computer class which sucked as it was one of the few parts of the school day I didn't usually dread. For one thing, it was the one class in which I was doing well. More to the point, neither Madison, Sophia nor Emma were in this class, though some of their friends were. Those girls didn't feel the need to harass me without the trio around, and I was further removed from them because I was in the advanced stream of the class.

I waited for the old computer to finish its ridiculously long load process and began digging. The place for news and discussion on capes was Parahumans Online. The front page had constant updates on recent, international news featuring capes. From there, you could go to the wiki, where there was information on individual capes, groups and events, or to the message boards, which broke down into nearly a hundred sub-boards, for specific cities and capes. I opened the wiki in one tab, then found and opened the message board for Brockton Bay in another.

I directed the wiki to open its page on the ABB. It seemed there had been some updates done since I had last visited the page. The addition of a new cape as one of Lung's lieutenant's; Bakuda, the edit had taken place five days ago. Her picture only showed her from the shoulders up, a girl with straight black hair, large opaque goggles over her eyes and a metal mask with a gas mask styled filter covering the lower half of her face. A braided cord of black, yellow and green wires looped over one of her shoulders. I couldn't pinpoint her ethnicity with the mask and goggles, and her age wasn't any easier to figure out.

Reading her details was rather daunting and frightening, the mad Tinker bomber that held the whole Cornell University hostage. I retuned to the ABB's main page and browsed down to Defeats and Captures and there it was.

_'Rookie cape Godiva bursts onto the scene by defeating and capturing Oni Lee, who is now in PHQ for holding until villain's trial by teleconference. With the extensive and documented murder and assasinations attributed to him, its expected he will face imprisonment in the Birdcage should he be found guilty at trial.'_

I felt like bodily grabbing the terrible trio and shoving this in their faces. Worthless, was I? How many future lives have I saved by getting Oni Lee off the street? Perhaps even your miserable existences, I imagined saying to them.

There was a link embedded in my name and I already had a page!

I clicked on that to open a new tab and found my page unsurprisingly empty except for another link back to Oni Lee's apprehension under the 'Victories' sub-section. I closed that and switched tabs to the message board to see what people were saying.

As expected, there was a post by an ABB minion threatening violence against me. There was a request by someone asking for more information on the fight, which turned into a brainstorming thread of what it would've taken to bring down Oni Lee, but it was all drivel with nothing coming remotely close – not surprising, until those Merchants were out of jail the only people with details was Armsmaster, Jake and Cheryl, and all three wouldn't post to the site, though I expected that gang leader Sam to soon connect the dots and perhaps reply. Another post asked if Bakuda would possibly try her bomb-hostage strategy to ransom Oni Lee back.

If that happened, then it'd be the responsibility of more senior heroes than I, but there was no denying with my infiltration abilities that I could possibly play a key role in stopping Bakuda sooner and saving more potential lives.

The bell rang at that point and I had to make sure to clear my browsing history, quit properly and log off.

The next class was World Affairs and in it I would face Madison, and sure enough there she was with two girls next to her who broke into giggles at the sight of me. Airheaded insignificant bitches. Their prank slash humiliation of the day was juice on my usual seat. Then if that wasn't bad enough Madison had the audacity to try and pinch my homework from my desk. My relfexes acted so quickly that my brain had to play catch up, my workbook was in mid-air, with my hand on one side and Madison's on the other.

She looked surprised for an instant then smirked at me expectantly, clearing waiting for me to give up.

But... perhaps the events of the weekend had added some metaphorical armor to me... but... I just wouldn't take it anymore. I was powerful, I mattered, their insults were hot air now. I had proven myself to myself if that made any sense.

I looked up directly into her eyes conveying one message clearly 'Fuck off'. She was startled and Madison's eyes widened, then she started to tug harder to no avail.

"Madison," I said coldly. "Kindly leave my book." Then pulled hard, quick and the book was ripped out of her grip.

Mr Gladly cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Madison, who took the hint and hurried on. I was rewarded with Madison getting a solid 'Not handed in' next to her name for the project we had to turn in today. _Suck on that, bitch_, I thought.

Of course when I stepped out of class I was confronted by Emma, Madison and Sophia, along with half a dozen other girls. Who promptly crowded me into a corner, unable to squeeze past them without getting pushed or elbowed back. I probably could've bowled them all over, but again, couldn't.

Madison started off, "Think that was funny, making me get a Fail for that assignment."

Figures. I looked up again and shot daggers at her with my eyes, "No, that was because you failed to do it, and I stopped you from stealing mine."

I was again rewarded with silence, having thrown a metaphorical wrench in their usual tirade of pretending to talk to each other, while they were actually talking to me, speaking of me in the third person with insults. They rallied quickly though.

"Nobody likes her. Nobody wants her here."

I looked directly into Sophia's eyes, she frowned at me and I said, "I don't like you, and I don't want to be here."

Another wrench as they were thrown into the silence of astonishment.

"Ugliest girl in our grade."

I turned to look at Emma, whose eyes now widened in alarm at something I could only guess at, "Do you know how many results you get when you type 'skinny girls' into a search engine? One hundred and one million. Your back does ache occasionally with those Ds as I remember."

"Never talks to anybody. Maybe she knows she sounds like a retard and keeps her mouth shut."

"Hmmm, perhaps I want conversation from somebody with higher IQ than their shoe size," I stared straight at Madison again, "which in the case of this school, I'm sorely lacking for choice."

Silence again.

"If I were her, I'd kill myself..."

I burst into laughter, "Oh gosh, I was wrong, half your shoe sizes if that's the best you can come up with."

"So glad we don't have gym with her. Can you imagine seeing her in the locker room? Gag me with a spoon."

If there was one thing you get when walking around nude as much as I did, then it was acceptance of the way you look, "Please don't project your body issues onto others," I retorted.

"Hey bitch...I don't have..." the girl in question directly adressed with an ugly look on her face. I smiled menacingly in return. Ooh, pushed a button there.

Sophia grabbed Emma and Madison at this point and left, both girls protesting at the treatment. In their wake they left a bunch of confused girls who were seemingly rudderless without the foundation of the terrible trio. I just picked up my bag and walked out of the press of bodies, they gave shouts of surprise as I passed through them like a ship's prow goes through water.

_Fuck this shit_, I thought and despite the victory I just had, it actually only served to slap me in the face how pointless it was trying to get an education here while dealing with this. At this rate I would do better to do home schooling and self-study online , use the public library and take my GEDs when the time came.

I went to my sanctuary in the east side staircase, got my dufflebag, and walked out the front door of school.

Good bye, Winslow.

* * *

><p>When I got home it was still early enough that my dad wasn't back from work yet, so I wouldn't have the conversation I knew would be a very tough one. I dumped the duffle and my school bag in my room, undressed and after feeling both a sense of relief and oddly power, headed down into the kitchen to eat my lunch. I spent the next hour with all my textbooks for the year, drawing up self-study schedules and so forth so I could show dad I wasn't doing this on a whim.<p>

I also felt a bit restless so decided on a bit of an impromptu patrol. Keeping in mind of what Armsmaster had advised me with babysteps I decided to go to the nice parts of town this time. Crime wasn't just the sole province of gangs in Brockton Bay, after all, so after plunging into the Subrosa I headed downtown.

There the streets and sidewalks had good infrastructure, wide, relatively clean (it was still a street) and the skyscrapers towered over you, but not oppressively. The streets were visibly less busy as the lunch crowd had already retreated into their office towers and were slaving away in their cubicles. I passed restaurants that were winding down from the rush, expensive niche shops, banks, department stores and so forth.

I found myself window browsing quite a few of them, despairing at the cost of some, and flabbarghasted that a shop could charge that much for just a bit of fancy imported soap and still stay in business. I was in the food section of a Department store, looking at the prices they charged here when I spotted my first bit of crime on this patrol.

It happened so quickly at first I thought I had imagined it. A teenage girl with pony tailed hair and rather well dressed in slacks, moderate heels and blouse with a jacket over it, passed a rack which housed microwave dinners. I looked again and saw that the formerly pristinely ordered rack which had held Chicken Briyani dinners, was now missing one. I looked back and saw the girl wasn't carrying a shopping bag and walking in a perfectly ordinary way, not even a hint on her body language or face that she had just shoplifted. I dont know where the dinner was on her precisely but the jacket was a likely location. Then I saw the way her eyes casually scoped her surroundings and she stopped to examine some imported fruit. I now spotted the overhead surveilance camera, it was a domed one with a tiny red light in it – which turned off in that moment. The girl continued her walk and again stopped, seemingly randomly, but it was for another camera... which turned off.

Okay, was she a cape that could control technology remotely or just a rather good hacker... and to just steal lunch?

At this point I was a bit desperate for anything to happen on this patrol, so with this bit of petty crime and a more intriguing mystery on my hands I decided to run with it.

I followed the girl out of the Department store, onto a bus, which took us to the periphery of the Docks, she got off and headed deeper in and right to the areas that gave this part of the city such a bad reputation.

It looked like a city sliced right out of those Post Apocalyptic movies, where war or disaster had left it abandoned and decaying; deep potholes in the roads, plants and reeds growing through split concrete, rust, peeling paint – the slow march of both time and nature reclaiming what humanity had wrought. There were people still here though; the homeless, the unemployed, pretty much what you'd expect, there were a few surprises though, an artist painting the ruined urban landscape around him and he was pretty good too – the shoplifter girl waved at him and he smiled back, returning the greeting.

Her destination was a dilapidated factory with a massive sliding metal door locked shut by a coil of chain. The size of the door and the broadness of the driveway was made for large trucks or small boats and would have been backed up through the entryway back in the factory's heyday. The building itself was quite large, stretching nearly half the block, three stories tall.

The girl headed to the side of the building, using a key to open a small door. She opened the door but instead of entering she merely pushed it open and stood to the side and looked directly at me, and I could make out a big satisfied grin on her transparent face, "Hello there, please come in."

What the fuck? I was in the Subrosa, how could she...

"You should be more careful walking around in the Docks, all the debris, dust, grime and litter... you may be invisible but your feet still exert pressure on the ground and the thing that gave you away to me was the crunch of loose gravel on the tarmac under your feet... most would dismiss such a thing... but not me."

Was she a telepath...?

"No, I'm not... I'm psychic."

"Would you stop that," I snapped in irritation.

"Can't be helped," the girl smirked and walked inside, "come on. I promise I won't bite and there aren't any traps in here."

I entered carefully making sure to keep myself fully intangible. It was dark inside, with only slivers of weak illumination coming from painted over dusty windows. The rusted hulks of old machinery covered with practically ancient fabric dominated this floor. The girl closed the door but didn't lock it, and headed off to one end of the factory where there was a metal spiral staircase. She started to climb it and I headed up after her.

"My name is Lisa by the way, family name is irrelevant."

Up the staircase was another door, it was reinforced with pretty heavy duty locks that was new and well looked after, in stark contrast to the rest of the place. 'Lisa' if that was her actual name, opened this one too and let me in. Beyond the threshold was what I would have termed the living room, though the one room alone had nearly as much floor space as the ground floor of my house did.

In the centre of the space was a couch, which was both facing a coffee table and one of the largest television sets I had ever seen. Below the television set was a video game console, a DVD player and a pretty good extensive movie collection. Speakers larger than the TVs my dad and I had at home sat on either side of the whole setup. Behind the couches were tables, some open space with rugs and shelves set against the walls. The shelves were only half filled with books and magazines, while the rest of the shelf space was filled with odds and ends.

The second section was a collection of rooms. It was hard to label them as such, though, because they were more like cubicles, three against each wall with a hallway between them. They were a fair size, and there were six doors, but the walls of each room were only eight or so feet tall, not reaching all the way up to the roof.

"Like the place?" Lisa asked and headed to one side where the equivalent of an open plan kitchen area was set up, she popped the briyani into a microwave and set it running.

"It's more space than I'm use to that's for sure. Given what I'm seeing, why bother with the petty theft?"

"Oh I have my reasons, all of which are pretty summed up by, I'm a very powerful Thinker, and I want to keep that power away from the wrong hands which include the government, so can't exactly be a law abiding rogue and especially not an official hero, therefore no bank account, no credit cards, nothing, hence why I'm reduced to stealing microwave dinners for my lunch."

I frowned, "You're telling me this because..."

"I want to keep my privacy, and you're not going to bring me in for stealing a ten dollar chicken briyani. If you were going to do that, you'd have busted me much earlier. Now its rude to continue this conversation with me not knowing at least who you are."

I used this opportunity to try a new 'entrance' I had thought up. I willed my hair into a curtain that shielded my face, and the instant I stepped into the Real, held my hand out to the side and conjured the mask before putting it on, and pulling the hair away to reveal it again, "My name is Godiva."

"Nicely done," Lisa imitated an applause, "and good grief am I going to get a headache soon..." I frowned behind my mask thinking she was insulting my body, "no, no, side effect of my power. You'll attract guys even now, trust the Thinker." Now that I was back in the Real and this close to her, I could see now her hair colour was dirty blonde, with a light sprinkling of freckles on her nose, a girl next door kind of face and she was a full head shorter than me. "Oh and congrats on taking down Oni Lee."

"Thanks," I said somewhat awkwardly as she was now rubbing her temples with eyes closed.

"Okay, lets make a deal," she said eventually, "quid pro quo, you keep me off PRT and everyone's radar, I'll aid you by using my Thinker power to help you in your heroics."

"Uh, isn't doing the latter the exact opposite of the former, I'm going to have to interact with the Protectorate at some point and if you're with me..."

She smiled, "I'll be masked of course and if you're ever just doing recon, you can create a mask with your power that has a camera that'll let me see and hear what you do, right from the comfort of this little pad of mine."

"I've never created something that small, complex, not to mention having it tuned to the correct broadcast frequency," I protested.

"My power says you can, its just a matter of giving you a sample to take apart to aid your visualization."

"I also patrol invisible, it kind of ruins the surprise effect if I have another visible cape next to me," I next pointed out... I hated how I was being effectively railroaded by Lisa.

Lisa gave another all knowing smile returned to the microwave to retrieve her lunch and set it down onto the coffee table and moved to stand in front of me. She held out her hand. "Take my hand and go invisible."

What?... could that even... work? Lisa just kept holding out her hand, her patient smile never wavering.

"One step at a time, I've barely known you for a half an hour and you want to effectively be my hero partner already?"

Lisa nodded lowering her hand, "Its both the blessing and curse of being a Thinker like I am, I know almost everything I need to about you to already have made the decision, I even want to be your friend. But I sometimes bulldoze ahead when I see a good or desirable outcome without regard for the other person's feelings... even if I know that a course of action would be good, its not necessarily true that they see it that way too. So I apologize."

"Oh, accepted I guess," rather startled at her frank speaking and I've never really had somebody so sincerely apologize to me.

"Suffice it to say, from what I saw of your appearance when you stepped out of the mirror reality, as long as you have skin to skin contact with a person, you can bring them with you into the mirror and bring them back to reality. If you decide to accept my help, I can go in there with you and offer my powers on site relatively safely – its another option at least. I'll get used to the nudity myself eventually, like you did. So think about it, my lunch is getting cold and you can consider this a place to crash if you're ever in need, I'm lonely and I have way too much space to know what to do with."

"Sure... thanks I guess."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

It was to my relief and slight surprise that my dad's infamous temper didn't blow up in my face when I told him of what I had done. He just sighed and gave me a serious look. "I'm not impressed that you went on a patrol without at least informing me, or even Armsmaster now, just so you can have a check-in time. So..."

I gave a genuinely contrite look, "Sorry, dad."

"As for the home schooling, it's an option I didn't consider because I wanted you to remain social with your peers, or at least let the chance for it remain. That being said, with the level of bullying and how its effecting your grades..." Dad rubbed his face in thought, "okay, I'll agree to home schooling."

I spontaneously jumped from my seat in the kitchen and hugged him hard. "Thanks, dad."

"It'll require me to jump through a few hoops and a bit of red tape, but it's doable." I broke the hug and returned to eating my dinner. "Now tell me of this Lisa..."

I told the whole story of my patrol and following Lisa to her hideout in the docks and so forth.

"A Thinker," my dad mused to himself in thought, "could you tell what specifically she could do?"

"If anything, she was like Sherlock Holmes dialled to a hundred... she could take the smallest observed detail of something and then just intuit and deduce everything about it. She just looked at me coming out of the Subrosa and deduced I could apparently take someone with me in there as long as they were touching my skin whilst moving in and out."

"Do you think that's possible?"

"It seems like it could work. I'm just not comfortable trying it on an actual person, there's still so many unknowns about the Subrosa. Lisa seemed very confident about it, enough to risk her own skin, but she could also be wrong. Know anyone with a live pig, so I can try?" I asked whimsically.

"Brockton Bay isn't exactly into farming dear, I'll look around. So what do you think about Lisa's offer?"

"It'd be awesome to have a friend near my own age again, but..." I sighed unable to finish the sentence.

"Emma," dad nodded in understanding, he looked thoughtful for a moment before giving me an earnest look, "Tay, it's a very understandable thing that you never want that to happen again, that you fear being betrayed to that level again, but I want to tell you about a sermon I attended at church a year or so back. The pastor gave the most insightful acronym for the word 'fear' – false evidence appearing real. You look at Lisa, and you see only the potential for her to become Emma... but is she Emma? Has Lisa yet betrayed you? No, of course not, you're not even friends with her yet, but will you throw away the possibility of a new friend, one who could potentially last a lifetime, because of one poor excuse of a human being named Emma? Will you let Emma take your capacity for friendship away?"

Dad's words hit me like a truck and I slumped back in my chair, feeling treacherous tears start to spill down my cheeks, "No."

"Good, now while I don't like the fact that she's used her power to live the life of a thief, I can understand it. When I read just what's publicly available on the Thinkers that the PRT and government employs... its a wonder that the Constitution of this country is still worth a damn," he shook his head, "Anyway, I'd sleep a lot easier if you have, at the very least another set of eyes watching your back on a patrol, and if Lisa is a Super Sherlock Holmes so to speak then just imagine what you together can accomplish..."

"I'm the super brawn, she's the super brains?" That would be awesome ... any crime we encountered together could be solved on the go almost. "Okay, I'll give it a try, keep everything mask on for the moment until we can build some trust... then perhaps you can meet."

"I look forward to it."

* * *

><p>Tuesday and Wednesday passed with me probably doing more schoolwork and learning than I would've had achieved at Winslow in a few weeks. It was really amazing what not having look over your shoulder every moment and having to be wary of the next bully or prank did for my concentration. By Thursday, my dad had gotten the official rubber stamp blessing from the Education officials of the city for home schooling. He took to it with a happy gusto that if I had to be honest, I enjoyed as well.<p>

I could almost feel that my relationship with him was exactly how it should be again. With the daily stress of Winslow gone from my life, there was no reason to turtle up in front of my dad. The weight of that place and everything associated with it, it's like I was Atlas putting down the celestial spheres for a bit of breather... only I'd never have to pick them up ever again.

The only piece missing from our life now was mom, but that was a hurt that both of us shared and while that wound would scab over and even eventually heal closed... the scar would always remain.

My random patrols on both days netted me stopping a convenience store robbery and ending a police high speed pursuit on one of the main highway routes of the city. Both events were quite underwhelming, being over almost as soon as they began.

The thug robbing the store had his gun ripped upward by a hair tendril from me, before being wrapped and lifted into the air, he was promptly tazered and handcuffed by the store clerk. I got a free ice cream out of that after the rather flustered and blushing clerk offered me anything in the store on his expense.

The high speed chase allowed me to try one of the conjurations I had been practising in dealing with any vehicle, something I could maybe try in the future when encountering Squealer – though she probably had run flat tires as standard equipment on her Tinker cars – but the training paid off for dealing with ordinary vehicular crime. I had spotted the chase as it had passed me before turning onto the highway. The car was a Ford sedan and I re-entered the Real, sprinted as fast as I could to get a proper line of sight before flicking my fingers.

A deployed spike strip appeared with a slight flash of light directly in front of the fleeing car. Two loud bursts of air heralded the tires of the car being shredded and the tattered rubber flailed on the rims before the wheel rims themselves dug into the asphalt. It looked like spark shower fireworks had suddenly gone off as the car drastically slowed down. BBPD cruisers easily caught up at this point and made the arrest, and it was during my subsequent statement to the officers that I learned it was a straightforward case of grand theft auto from a small time crook.

As Friday dawned I finally decided to head down to the Docks to Lisa's factory loft and inform her of my acceptance of her partnership offer. On the way there I had wondered how I was going to announce my presence, she didn't exactly have a doorbell. I needn't have bothered worrying, as I approached the small secondary entrance to the factory, I found a note stuck there simply saying 'Come in' and behold the door was unlocked and partially open.

It was a rather dangerous thing to do, but when the ink that it was written in smudged a bit under my thumb, I realized that...

"Show off," I muttered.

I entered the dusty factory, up the spiral staircase and noted there was a door buzzer now mounted there. I shrugged and thumbed the button... I heard nothing from inside the loft, was it broken? No, probably a silent version that flashed a light or some other signal inside.

The door opened and I briefly saw Lisa's freckled face with a pleased grin on it before the threshold was opened all the way. "Hi Godiva, right on time."

"Hey Lisa, I wasn't aware I'd given a time I was coming."

"Oh you did, just didn't say it with your mouth," Lisa closed the door, I turned around and felt rather surprised that I didn't feel more shock at seeing my prospective partner in heroics, in her birthday suit. Then a stupid surge of envy made itself known – the girl was rather more blessed in figure than I was. It actually made a bit of sense since she was older than me by a year or two, at least it seemed that way.

She folded her arms and looked at me pointedly then gestured to herself, "Seventeen years old, by the way."

"Oh, and I take it you're trying to get used to it?"

"Yeah," Lisa nodded, "its quite interesting how much more comfortable it is to sleep this way. Though I'm sure its going to be a whole other kettle of fish to go outside like this. How did your little trip to the city's abattoir go?"

I narrowed my eyes at her, "Fine, though disgusting, and yes I could take a pig into the Subrosa and back, no problems."

"My power is only wrong in context if I go down the wrong paths of knowledge, which doesn't happen often," Lisa explained.

"Yeah, well, its good to know for sure. In terms of rescuing people it could be very handy. In any event, I'm going to regret asking... but how did you know I went to the abattoir?"

Lisa grinned and merely gestured with her finger to follow. She led me to one of the rooms of the loft and inside it looked almost like something straight out of some sort of spy movie – one wall was filled with computer screens facing a comfortable leather armchair, in front of which was a desk and large computer. The only illumination came from the screens, which was showing a rather hypnotic fractal ever changing fractal pattern – this gave the whole room a rather eerie otherworldly quality.

"Welcome to my... or should that rather be, our, little Intel Hub." She fell into the chair and her hands fell on the mouse and keyboard of the computer.

The screensaver changed to show a typical desktop virtual environment with the latest in operating systems. Lisa began clicking and typing so fast that I struggled to keep up with what programs she was accessing, but then... camera feeds began popping up, official law enforcement surveillance feeds from all around Brockton Bay.

"Do I want to know how you managed to hack in there?" I felt awed yet quite apprehensive.

"As far as the system is concerned, I'm perfectly authorized to view these feeds. Rather easy when you can intuit the passwords of a few certain high profile individuals in government and law enforcement."

Lisa's hands played on the keyboard and next I was looking at a composite top down map of Brockton Bay. Then overlays appeared, colouring in various sectors of the city. "General areas of gang control, Red Green for ABB, Grey for Empire 88, Blue for Merchants." More typing and light red dots appeared with varying intensities. "Heat map for reported crimes."

"Amazing," I murmured with astonishment, was there really so much crime in the Bay?

"Its all crime, from a pickpocket or theft all the way to murder," she explained, she applied another filter and a lot of dots erased themselves. "The remaining ones are serious crimes, rape, murder, assault, and so forth. The average civilian is never openly shown the unvarnished crime stats like this, they technically have full rights to the info, but if its ever asked they get given the kiddies version, same goes for journalists. In any case, using this I can design new optimized patrol routes for you, that also keep you even more unpredictable, since I'm using a dynamic variable to determine it."

I stared at the map for a while just letting it all sink in, it was like I was staring at Mount Everest from its base. And the even more scary thing was that these were just reported or observed crimes, how much had also fallen through the cracks?

"Okay," I said faintly but quickly steeled myself, "consider us partners. Fifty fifty loot split and if I ever figure out how to make money legitimately with the aid of my power I'll help pitch in for sprucing this place up as our HQ, and for secondary and tertiary fallback bases."

Lisa grinned widely and held out her hand, which I shook. "With my power we'll never really have to worry about funds, but it'll definitely help... and my cape name is Cheshire."

I smiled, focused and pulled us both into the Subrosa, "Well then, Cheshire, let's get to work."

* * *

><p>It was close to the start of weekend when I was contacted by Armsmaster for the first meeting of our mentorship. Lisa was the one who alerted me first that it was going to happen at all, as she had a nice little view of the comings and goings of the Protectorate – again thanks to her wonderful password guessing skills. He had left a cryptic message on the PHO forum boards that I was to call him for the details of the meet location.<p>

I called his number from a payphone a few blocks away from the loft.

"No names," was the first thing he said, "meet in Downtown, corner of West and Linden. Top floor. Seven A.M."

"Got it," I replied.

He promptly hung up.

So I got up early on Saturday, did the daily personal stuff and headed off into the fresh early morning air, intending to use the jog to Downtown as a warm up.

The address in question was a rather tall office building of easily thirty floor and as it was so early, they would naturally be closed. I made myself intangible to the Real and entered anyway, taking the stairs up as it would be sure give-away to use an elevator. Thirty floors of stairs are nothing to sneeze at, even for someone with my stamina and constitution, so I was rather exerted by the time I hit the top, but I was far from exhausted.

The top floor was a surprise, I was expecting hallways, cubicles, offices, the typical things and rooms you'd find in a glass office building. I was confronted with an entire open floor with no divisions and only the occasional white painted load bearing pillar. The floors were carpeted and tiled in a manner that I could see where the divisions would've gone, but it was as if the workers just stopped at that point, picked up their tools and left.

Armsmaster in full armor and halberd in hand, stood on the center of the floor.

I walked forward until I was a respectable fifteen feet in front of him before re-entering the Real and putting on my mask.

"Morning Godiva."

"Morning Armsmaster."

"Welcome to one of our little unofficial training venues, until I indicate otherwise, this is where we'll meet when I send you a note on the PHO boards. I've prepared and installed a number of countermeasures that will prevent our detection here. Officially, this floor is unused because there are no tenants who could afford the price of putting up an office here, off the record, that is mainly because the true owners of the building made the price that high, giving the Protectorate the option of installing a safe house here."

"A PRT building then," I deduced easily.

"Yes," he nodded. "I'm glad you took my advise with starting small. Too many of the new kids we get into the Wards let their power get to their heads, thinking they can start taking on the big bad A-list villains right off the bat. We usually need to knock some sense into them, give them a reality check. While I can't do exactly the same for you, I can only tell you to keep going, step by step, grow, build yourself up, your experience... just like you ventured up thirty floors of steps without taking the elevator. Understand?"

I nodded.

"Now the first thing I want to ask you is, what is the first power you possess?"

I frowned in thought, "Don't you already know that? My hair..."

"Wrong answer," he shook his head. "Your first power, is the greatest one on this planet, its the power that built the first tools, the harnessing of fire. It's shaped and has had great impact on the world around us..."

"The mind."

"Exactly," Armsmaster nodded with a smile, "it controls our bodies, with which we can change the environment around us. Our actual powers as capes or parahumans and merely extensions of that principle. You train to improve every aspect of yourself, continuously, never ceasing, and then your enemies will be defeated by simply you being... you.'

'We will begin with the martial arts first, you have any training in that area?"

"Nothing formal," I shook my head, "just the basics of some Krav Maga that I've learned online and practised."

"Then I'll assume I'm starting from scratch, I'm going to teach you something from everything; Karate, Muay Thai, Aikido, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, anything that is practical and useful, as out there in the real world, no opponent will line up perfectly for you to throw him or execute some flashy kick or sporty martial art combo. I will also teach you to synergize the use of your power with it."

Armsmaster put down his halberd and fell into a ready stance. I was surprised by how dexterous he still was, even with that suit on.

"This is called Mountain stance, in it you are balanced, poised to act in an instant in any direction, with the enemy facing your left or right profile, so they have a narrow target. Hands hovering in front of the face, elbows tucked in to the ribs to protect them."

I mirrored the stance as best I could, "Oh, before we begin in the interest of the very expensive armor you're wearing... I think you should know that I have a Brute rating that I haven't been able to measure properly."

Armsmaster visibly didn't react at all, "What have you been able to determine?"

"The fire escape door locks might as well be tissue paper."

"My armor is built to handle anything up to a Brute 4, how well can you keep your strength moderated?"

"I've not broken anything by mistake for a month now."

"In our next session I'll bring some portable testing measures and devices," Armsmaster declared, "for the moment we're just going to shadow fight slowly, no hard contact."

"I take it a lot of time goes into that armor?"

"Easily three hours a day, more when I work on a new feature."

For the next hour he worked with me on the basics of each possible attack that could come from a human being, which was a surprising large amount, since their were eight possible points they could come from; feet, knees, elbows, fists and in certain circumstances, even the head.

"Given that you have a Brute power, I'll tell you now that all of them share the same vulnerability – their skin might not break, nor their bones shatter, but they still have to obey the laws of physics, their squishy brain still bounces around in their skull, so enough force applied there and you can give a Brute a concussion, unless you're an Alexandria or Legend, whose bodies are in constant or semi-constant Breaker states – then apply a bit of containment foam and there we go. I tell you this because that once word of your power gets out, there will be Brute villains and even heroes who will pay the city a visit, just have a crack at you. See where they stand in relation to you.'

'You'll also find that the old saying of 'Birds of a feather', also very much applies to capes as well. The Brutes have their countrywide network of fight clubs. The Tinkers have the Toybox collective and the Movers have their race circuit gatherings in the Mojave and over the North Pacific, expect the Brutes and Toybox to contact you soon."

We next worked on initial strategies he'd worked out for me to incorporate my hair in defence, attacks and battlefield control. From things such as creating fully fledged prehensile hair limbs and attacking into the gaps or blinds spots of an opponent, forming a shield to protect my back, and creating a full dome shield to completely shield me from any direction.

By the end of the third hour of our session he called a halt. "Okay, keep practising until you can do all that via muscle memory and instinct." He handed me a memory stick. "On there you'll find a little book I put together and adapted philosophies on conflict from all the greats in history, as it can apply to parahumans. There's also the full details on a few things I want you to try with your Creation ability. Our next session will probably be again on a weekend, so try to keep your schedule flexible."

"Thanks a lot, Armsmaster, for the session, if I could pay you..."

He laughed warmly, "No, no, no, Godiva. The thing you'll have to do for me in return for these sessions, well, a lifetime of reasonable favours for your old mentor would be a start."

I laughed with him, "Consider it done."

"Now off with you, and practice hard."

* * *

><p>The next day I was with Cheshire in the Subrosa at a rather disturbing scene just outside of Brockton Bay College.<p>

Lisa when I had first taken her into the Subrosa had rather freaked out considerably. Her Intuition power had briefly 'fritzed' in her own words, before suddenly becoming considerably amplified. "Before I had been reading from a tele-prompter, now I'm slapped in the face with a scientific report into my memory in terms of detail." Rather frustratingly her power had been unable to return anything more on the nature of Subrosa beyond that we were in another dimensional layer of the universe. She had been skittish as hell leaving the Loft in the buff, initially walking with her left arm to cover her breasts and a cupped hand between her legs. She had looked ridiculous, but eventually got over it after we had passed the third person who didn't bat an eye at us.

Her power had intuited from the Intel Hub that there would most likely be a crime today in the area around the college and lo and behold. A young woman near the college had gotten near beaten to death. Police was there keeping the crowd well away from the college main entrance where the ambulance was parked and tending to the college student.

"Incoming, Glory Girl and Panacea," Cheshire pointed up.

My hearing had picked up the flapping of fabric and displaced air as the current most prominent members of the independent group of heroes known as New Wave arrived. Glory Girl, or Victoria Dallon was both a Mover and Brute – easily able to break the speed of sound in flight and demolish buildings with her strength, she wore her usual ensemble of a pure white dress that seemed glued to her upper body, with a flare that reached her mid-thigh and shorts underneath, with mid calf length white boots and a golden sunray style tiara in her hair.

Usually she was glued to the hip of her sister, Panacea aka Ama Dallon, who had the literal power to heal with a touch – who looked postively mousy and conservative in comparison, wearing a white robe with the red medical cross on her front and back.

Their civilian identities were known because the group had decided to spearhead an openness movement among capes. As more often than not, when one wore a mask, just like on the Internet, you felt untouchable and unaccountable for your actions due to your anonymity. Many less than noble capes had abused their masked identities to get away with acts and even crimes that they wouldn't dare do if their true identities were known. The New Wave movement was not doing too well, however, as while it was a noble sentiment, the unwritten rules to keep cape ID's separate from the person underneath the mask was an invaluable shield against villains who played for keeps by targeting a hero's family – who themselves had Kill Orders on their heads.

Glory Girl was rather relatively slow, flying in at what I guessed was only sixty to seventy miles an hour, but it was understandable as she was carrying her sister to the scene of the emergency. The heroine landed a step away from the open ambulance and Panacea hopped directly into the open rear cab to start work to save the student's life.

"Got the perp," Cheshire pointed at the far edge of the crowd now oohing and aahing over the appearance of New Wave. "See the man, twenty two year old, Caucasian with a shaved head, dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, jeans and work boots. Empire 88 member."

"How did you spot him?" I asked curiously.

"He has swollen knuckles, has punched a human repeatedly within the last hour, and look at his expression," I saw that immediately, it was equal parts glee and satisfaction, with the occasional hint of disgruntlement – no doubt he didn't like the fact that his victim was going to have no physical reminders of her ordeal, "and he's E88 because the victim is black. This was a racially motivated attack."

"Effin skinheads." It said something about the world that the Nazi white supremacist movement had gained steam again just thanks to the sheer bad luck that during the late 1970s and the emergence of parahumans, the head of the then tiny marginalized and dying out Neo-Nazi movement triggered, who eventually became known as the cape, Allfather – who was a metalloid-kinetic; shaping and moving metal to his will. His son, Kaiser, was current head of the Empire 88 in Brockton Bay, and had a variant of that power where he could make metal appear in any shape from any solid surface.

It was then that the skinhead in question sported an alarmed look on his face and hurriedly walked off down the street. I looked to see what had spooked him...

"Oopsie, Glory Girl spotted him, for all that girl is an airhead in general, when it comes to spotting a crook she's sharp," Cheshire explained. "You better go and get that skinhead before Glory Girl does, she's mad."

The heroine in question promptly shot into the air, and I needed no further prompt to sprint as fast as I could to follow.

At last measurement for a sprint, I was at Olympic sprinter level for speed, but could sustain it superhumanly for a long time. Even so I was still pedestrian in comparison to a flyer of Glory Girl's caliber.

I tracked down the confrontation in an alley, and entered just in time to witness the skinhead flying a good twenty five or thirty yards down the back road before hitting the asphalt, and he rolled for another ten.

_'Ouch, that had to hurt,'_ I thought, then became worried that the throw had been too much when the guy wasn't moving, but he gave a groan of pain and began efforts to get up.

"Ready to talk?" Glory Girl asked him, her voice carrying down the alley. She didn't move forward from where she hovered in the air, but she did let herself drop closer to the ground. Pressing one hand against his leg to support himself as he straightened up, he raised his other hand and flipped her the bird, then turned and began to limp down the alley, straight towards me, where I had began blossoming volumes of hair to swallow him up.

Then I saw Glory Girl's thunderous expression at being insulted, "Screw you too," she muttered and promptly kicked a dumpster below her hard enough to send it flying down the little road. It rotated lazily through the air as it arced towards the retreating skinhead.

_What the fuck? Is she insane... that would..._

My hair burst into the Real, wrapping around the dumpster to catch it and swallowing up the skinhead. That amount of momentum and mass was not stopped easily and I had to hastily generate more hair and imbue more force...

… the dumpster was arrested a mere meter from me and the now mummified E88 member, who was cursing and panicking. I dropped the heavy load to the side and reduced the hair volume to then shield my face.

"What are you thinking, Glory Girl?" I stepped into the Real, doing my entrance routine. "That would've likely killed him."

Glory Girl blinked in astonishment for a moment before flicking her hair out of her face. "Yeah, well," she was uncomfortable, "you're not telling me the bastard doesn't deserve it. Godiva, right?"

"Correct," I nodded, "and while I would like nothing more to see the Triple E's reduced to an unfortunate footnote in history of this city and the country. Killing their unpowered mooks is not the answer. Why do you need me, a cape noob, to tell you that?"

"I'm strong enough to lift a SUV over my head," Victoria muttered, "It's hard to hold back all the time."

"Do you still break the light switches and door handles of your home?" I retorted.

Glory Girl scoffed, "Of course not, that's the province of newb Brutes, and what would you know about it?"

I titled my head at her in consideration, it was hard to believe that a girl who already had five years of capehood behind her with her powers, was making such mistakes or acting in this fashion. Then I decided to prove a point and reveal this power on my own terms at least. I walked to the dumpster, ducked down to shove my arm underneath it and briefly tested the weight before standing up with it and holding it above my head. Then chucked it back so that it landed a few feet off from where it had originally started with a loud crash.

I looked at her with a pointed expression, "Now, shall we turn over the perp..."

She raised a hand, "Nice throw, rookie, but hang on, I was going to try to get him to talk... yeah, yeah, I know what I did wasn't conducive to talking... and I have a temper, sue me." She pulled out her cellphone from a pocket pouch on the belt of her costume and dialled a number.

"I wouldn't because you'd undoubtedly be represented by your mother, and I'd lose." Her mother, Carrol Dallon, aka the cape Photon Mom, was also the city's top lawyer.

Victoria laughed and nodded before beginning to speak into the phone. "Hey sis? Yeah, I found him. No, no, he's relatively fine, another cape was on scene and 'wrapped him up' so to speak. Godiva. Yeah. Yeah. Can you come just to make sure the perp is presentable? I'm at Spayder and Rock, there's this little road that runs behind the buildings. Downtownish, yeah. Yeah? Thanks."

She hung up and watched me as I adjusted the hair prison on the perp to be less haphazard and rob him properly of sight and hearing, while allowing him to still breathe and talk – which allowed a constant stream of threats and curses to stream out. In response I snaked hair into his mouth slightly, causing him to retch and sputter. He got the message when I kept doing it after each attempt at talking.

"You _so_ have to tell me what hair product you use?" she grinned floating closer to stand in front of the prison.

"Unfortunately that's not the secret of it," I shook my head. "I use an ordinary brand of shampoo and a nice conditioner, that's about it."

"And the nudity..."

I sighed... it would most likely be a repetitive question or issue until I was more well known. "My body can go invisible, nothing artificial on me."

"Damn, that sucks girl, but you look quite comfortable in your skin, good on you. Wish I had that courage." Victoria was in another tier of looks compared to me; beautiful, tall, gorgeous, blonde. She could probably pull going nude off much better.

We waited for her sister for another three or so minutes, where I took the opportunity to ask about New Wave and how they handled the cape business. Mostly only getting Victoria to relate a story or two about her mother's exploits.

"So a rookie saved your butt this time, Victoria?" Panacea entered the alley and approached us.

"Use my codename, please," Victoria told the girl.

"Our identities are public," Amy 'Panacea' Dallon retorted, pushing the hood back and scarf down to reveal brown frizzy hair and a face with freckles spaced evenly across it. She looked at me, "Greetings Godiva, thanks for saving my sister from herself."

Victoria bristled, "It's the principle of the thing."

"You want to talk about _principles_, Glory Girl?" Amy asked, in the most sarcastic tone she could manage, "This is the sixth – sixth! – time you've nearly killed someone. That I know about! But I know you better than anyone. If you're having trouble holding back, the problem isn't here -" she poked Victoria in the bicep. "It's here-" she jabbed her sister in the forehead.

"Panacea, or Amy..." I began.

"Amy."

"Amy, can you please give the bad Nazi skinhead a look so we can get on with this."

She nodded, "Yes, lets," she approached the hair prison. "I need skin contact..."

I manipulated the prison and the guy's arm was forced forward and his hand uncovered, where it helplessly flailed about desperately trying to grab something. I alleviated the density of the hair around his ears. "Oi, asshole, you're about to be healed, stop flailing about!"

The hand formed a fist, before giving the bird to Amy who quick as a snake, grabbed the middle finger to squeeze it in a rather painful fashion.

"Extensive exterior and interior bruising, slingshot break to the ribs, damage to knee tendons, hmm, relatively easy. I can only imagine what a flying dumpster would've done."

"How's the woman? Andrea?" Victoria asked. I felt the perp grew very relaxed in the prison as the healing was done.

"Better than ever, physically," Amy replied, "I grew her new teeth, fixed everything from the bruising to the scrapes, and even gave her a head to toe tune-up. Physically, she'll feel on top of the world, like she had been to a spa and had the best nutritionist, best fitness expert and the best doctor all looking after her for a straight month."

"But I guess the same can't be said for her emotions or state of mind," I commented.

"Yes, I'm no psychiatrist," Amy declared. "He should be good now."

I vanished into the Subrosa and unfurled the prison around the E88 mook's head, as I didn't want to have my distracting presence interrupt things, and dealing with an invisible threat was sufficiently terrifying on its own.

"Ready to answer some questions?"

The man's eyes lolled and he looked down and around in fear. "What the fuck is this?"

"You're in the clutches of the third cape in the room, skinhead. Godiva. She's right next to you, but you can't see her, one of the best Strangers I've ever seen. Think about that for a minute. You'll never know if she's gonna follow you to wherever you and your gang buddies are holed up. Unless you satisfy our curiosity sufficiently enough to let you go. Oh, and as an aside, my sister still has a bit of work to do on you."

"You fractured your ninth vertebra, that effects all nerve function in extremities below your waist, if I leave you as you are, your toes will always feel a little numb and you'll have a hell of a time getting it up, if you know what I mean." Amy moved her index finger stiffly and suggestively up and down.

"Fuck!" the man shouted, then winced, "I'll tell you. Please, just…"

Amy grabbed hold of his exposed hand and he immediately relaxed again.

"Empire Eight eight is gearing up for an offensive push against the ABB held Docks. We figure with Oni Lee out of the picture they've lost enough power that we can try muscling in. Lung, as powerful as he is, is just one guy, he can't be everywhere at once and Kaiser has got a plan to deal with him. His new Tinker bitch will die with a sniper shot to the head."

"Quantity has a quality of its own, I suppose," Victoria mused.

I shook my head, "Bakuda isn't going to allow anyone to get a bead on her. If Lung is smart, he'll stuff her in a secret workshop somewhere and have her churn out bombs all day, mounting them on relatively cheap rotary air drones for example and fly them straight to the action. Then numbers won't matter at all." Victoria and Amy looked at me weirdly and it was not just because of the strange cadence of my voice. "If I can imagine it, you think that a Tinker like Bakuda won't?"

Victoria turned back to the mook, "Who else is up to something? Faultline?"

"The bitch with the freaks in her crew? She's a mercenary, different goals. But maybe. If she wanted to branch out, now would be the time to do it. With her rep, she'd even do alright."

"Then who? Kaiser's declared he wants to seize it, but I'm willing to bet he's warned you about others making a play."

The skinhead laughed, then winced, "Are you dense, girl? Everyone's going to make a play. It's not just the major gangs and teams that are looking for a slice of the pie, there. It's everyone. The Docks were Oni Lee's stomping ground and now are ripe for the taking. The location's worth as much money as you'd get downtown. It's the go to place if you want to buy black market. Sex, drugs, violence. And the locals are already used to paying protection money. It's just a matter of changing who they pay to. The Docks are rich territory, and we're talking the potential for a full scale fucking war over it."

He continued, "You want to know my guess? Empire Eighty Eight is going to take the biggest slice of the Docks, because we're strong enough to. ABB is going to hold on to some but take huge losses. But you're also going to have a bunch of the little guys trying to take something for themselves. Über and Leet, Circus, the Merchants, Stain, others you've never heard of? They're going to stake out their ground, and one of two things is going to happen. Either there's war, in which case civilians get hurt and things get bad for you, or there's alliances between the various teams and solo villains and shit gets even worse for you."

I'd heard enough and enveloped his head again in the prison. "No good deed goes unpunished. I stopped and captured Oni Lee to save a young boy's life. Now there's a gang war looming..."

Victoria shook her head, "This stalemate between the gangs has been brewing for a while Godiva. Something was eventually gonna upset the balance enough to bring this outcome about. There's going to be conflict and people are going to die, but eventually all the gangs will wear each other out and a new balance will emerge."

Amy nodded in agreement, "This cycle's been going on in the Bay since the hard times hit the Dock Industry, New Wave, or the Brockton Bay Brigade, as we were then called, our parents fought the previous instance of the cycle, and until something changes the playing field, it will just happen again. The heroes will do everything they can to get people out of the line of fire, capture villains who go too far and stop the fighting, but mostly its best to just not get in the way."

Victoria got out her phone again and called for a police cruiser. Fifteen minutes later, Mr Skinhead was arrested and driven away. I said my goodbyes to Victoria and Panacea who sped away into the air.

"They're right you know." I almost jumped out of my skin at the whisper in my ear. Cheshire stood behind me with a smug grin at my distress, was I so distracted with my dark thoughts that I didn't even see her coming in the Subrosa? "No use drowning in guilt. It wont make anything better. We can only do what we can... no more, no less."

"Anything you can think of to stop the war or at least make it less bloody?"

"Stopping it is unfortunately impossible. To make it less bloody is obvious, we need to take Bakuda off the board."

I laughed incredulously, "Easier said than done. And even if we manage it as soon as tomorrow or a week from now, there's no telling how many bombs she's made for ABB use already."

"Oh I think quite a lot," Cheshire sighed, "I have a plan, but you won't like it."

"Okay, hit me with it."

We started walking back to the Loft and she explained...

"You've got to be kidding!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

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><strong>In: Boards ► Brockton Bay ► Heroes ►Independents ► Godiva<strong>

**(Showing Page 1 of 4)**

►** Judge (Original Poster) (Moderator)**  
>Posted on April 14, 2011:<p>

Okay, about time to start this one up. I've been delaying because of having to put the same flags and filters on it as was done with Narwhal's thread. I will be keeping a close eye here with my hand on the ban hammer, two strike policy is in effect. You have been warned. Otherwise usual rules apply with regard to identities and so forth.

► **Ekul**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

Yay, first post! There's been a lot speculation on what it took for her to take down Oni Lee. Now we have the first clues. She saved my store from being held up, appeared out of nowhere with long prehensile hair that neatly stopped and held the crook up in the air. So Stranger and Changer.

► **Lolitup**  
>Replied on April 14,2011:<p>

Hmmm, Stranger? that would fit, since one of the big things to get over with Oni Lee is that he always had the initiative in a fight. So Godiva probably turned the tables on him there.

► **Ekul**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

Yeah, the prehensile hair power seems tailor made for non-lethal takedowns.

► **Quansiko (Law Enforcement)(BBPD)**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

Did me and the Bay a big favor the other night. She stopped a potential high speed GTA which could've turned nasty.

► **Guitarist**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

What did she do? Stop the car with her hair? That's some mighty strong locks she got there, if that's the case.

► **Quansiko (Law Enforcement)(BBPD)**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

Nope. Somehow got a fully functioning Spike Strip in front of the car before it got on the highway. Took her statement afterward, usual red tape, then went to look for the Strip... vanished, not a trace of it.

► **Guitarist**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

Oh, perhaps a pocket dimension like Myrddin. Though how would she get a spike strip in the first place? Do you guys buy from some sort of supplier...

► **Quansiko (Law Enforcement)(BBPD)**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

There's a few companies that makes em, but they only sell to Law Enforcement.

► **AverageAlesandros (Cape Husband)**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

Compared to Tinkertech stuff, a spike strip is medieval and easy to make, even found a how to guide here [LINK]. So she builds it, carries it in a pocket dimension to whip out at a moments notice.

**End of Page.****1****,****2,3,4**

**(Showing Page 2 of 4)**

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX  
><strong>Replied on April 14, 2011:

Quansiko: Any guesses as to her measurements?

►** FantasyWillow (Cape Wife)**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011<p>

I'm impressed, one whole page on a female cape's forum page before the objectifying starts.

► **Quansiko (Law Enforcement)(BBPD)**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

XxVoid_CowboyxX: Not going there. Considering she's seen me and will be keeping an eye on her bio forum. She's a hero, so she won't kill me, but there's a whole lot a person can do before it gets to that level. She's a high level Stranger and those kinds of capes could be standing next to you and you wouldn't know. Think about that.

► **Bagrat (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)**  
>Replied on April 14, 2011:<p>

Yeah, Strangers can screw your life up, in oh so many ways – and they don't even need to lay a finger, power or in Godiva's case, hair, on you. I've got a contact who let me in on her Provisional PRT rating on that power – Stranger 10, boys and girls. She's the first cape ever to get a Stranger rating that high, and even beats out the late unlamented, Slaughterhouse 9 member Miasma, who was an 8,(he only died because the PRT sprayed lead everywhere and prayed), so even that won't help against her seemingly.

► **Godiva (Verified Cape)(Independent)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Greetings everyone. Might as well post here to get my say in before you all go on a million different tangents. Given activity on other threads and my experiences thus far in field, I'm going to get this out there so I don't feel like a broken record every time I go out.

My Stranger power works on _me_ only, but nothing _artificial_ on me. Therefore my costume is the one I was born in and a mask – which I can carry using a loophole in my power. I'm used to it by now and I might as well be a naturist at this point. I find people's reaction hilarious and oddly heartening, its like I'm constantly in one of those Prank shows on TV. Measurements: keep guessing... though I will say I'm an A cup, lets leave it at that.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Awww. So do you have a pocket dimension?

►** Godiva (Verified Cape)(Independent)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

What do you guys think? :-)

► **Bagrat (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Keep these jokers guessing, Godiva. Good policy to not advertise and keep aces up your sleeve.

► **Mirangro**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011<p>

**POST DELETED - 1st Warning. No direct personal insults. No shoving your beliefs down people's throat either. So take a time out while you're at it.**

►** Bagrat (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011<p>

Grief, the crazies are here already. Mirangro fails reading comprehension. Her Stranger power is useless if she wears clothes, and now she's decided to go without, it is now a personal lifestyle choice. She wouldn't deny you your own lifestyle choices, so why are you attacking her for hers?

**End of Page.****1****,****2,****3,4**

**(Showing Page 3 of 4)**

► **Godiva (Verified Cape)(Independent)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

You could say my powers forced me into this path, but it is one I have researched, investigated and went into with eyes wide open. I don't need to justify myself to him or anyone, there is one exception, to that, bonus points for guessing who it is.

► **Quansiko (Law Enforcement)(BBPD)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Technically, she's also not breaking the law, (at least in this State and locally). Simple nudity is perfectly legal. If there is evidence of _intent_ to shock, arouse or offend other persons, then it falls under _lewd conduct_, which is prohibited. Godiva showed none of that – she appeared out of her invisibility, gave her statement, and conducted herself perfectly normally as if it was an everyday thing. Then vanished again.

► **Godiva (Verified Cape)(Independent)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Thanks for clearing that up. I knew about the law of course, but there's a difference between what's written on paper and what's actually applied on the street. I could run into another officer, who could decide that I was 'lewd', and next thing I know I'm in the slammer.

► **Quansiko (Law Enforcement)(BBPD)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

It could happen, but not from local or State law enforcement, memo went round BBPD from our Captain regarding you, and it was forwarded to State. Be careful though if you're ever out of State.

► **Godiva (Verified Cape)(Independent)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

*Blushes*

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

You're kidding me. So I could just strip down and walk out of my apartment right now.

► **Quansiko (Law Enforcement)(BBPD)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

***Sigh,** yes. Hope you have the courage for it and understanding neighbours, and not run into anyone who doesn't fancy seeing your junk. They raise a stink and you'll be arrested to calm things down. Godiva can go invisible if she runs into trouble, can you? Again it's a matter of intent. You're not going out there because its what you believe in.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Aaah, yeah, think I'll pass. :-/

► **Bagrat (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Thought so, LOL. :-)

► **GstringGirl (Veteran Member)**  
>Replied on April 15, 2011:<p>

Its amazing. You go and be who you are, Godiva. Don't let any of the haters, jackasses and perverts get you down. (Eager new fan here!)

**End of Page.****1****,****2****,3,****4**

**(Showing Page 4 of 4)**

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011:<p>

Bagged a bunch of bad guys today. Cash in transit heist and bank robbery rolled very neatly into one, done by the same crew, led by a villain called Hourglass. First time I was ever shot at, not a nice feeling.

►** Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011:<p>

Damn. It's barely your second week and you've seen more action that I do in a month. Go girl!

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011:<p>

Its amazing what people get up to when they don't think they're being watched or that they leave around when they think they're alone :-

**End of Page.****1****,****2****,****3****,4**

* * *

><p>It was a stone fixture six stories tall, with crenelations on the roof and balconies, stone gargoyles at the corners and iron grilles on the windows. The entryway had wide stone stairs like a courthouse, with statues of rearing horses with wild manes on either side. The only clue of anything wrong with this scene of normality outside Brockton Bay Central Bank was parked awkwardly on those stairs; an armoured transport car, armed men in balaclavas rushing in and out of the bank to dump even more money bags into the open rear. Seems Lisa was right on the money with the delivery schedule.<p>

I walked up those steps, taking in everything about the robbery crew. These were no mere off-the-street thugs, there was definitely a preciseness and efficiency with which they did things – either they had practised this a lot, or they were former military. Their weapons certainly added credence to the latter; assault rifles, submachine guns, tactical vests with canister grenades...

"All tear gas grenades," Cheshire whispered as she followed a step or two behind me. "They're mercenaries, former military mostly. Take em down as quickly as you can."

I nodded and began preparing my hair, numerous whip like tendrils appeared and snaked into the air, two large volumes coalesced on either side of me forming giant forearms ending in clenched fists.

Rushing forward I shot two tendrils to each merc that was currently outside, roughly four in total; one to wrap around the guns, and another around the neck. I pulled and constricted. Rifles abruptly pointed into the sky and each merc naturally let go of the weapons to try and free their necks. Since their weapons were also clipped to their tactical vests this meant I had four bad guys hanging in the air by their own weapons. Their own body weight would strain the clips so badly that it would be all but impossible to de-clip the weapons.

Cheshire was now next to me and squinting at the dangling mercs who were still being effectively strangled. She tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at a specific thug and I immediately let go. He fell to the stairs unconscious.

"All of them, now."

I dropped the remaining mercs and had hair tendrils relieve them of all their tear gas grenades.

Then the gunfire started.

Bullets started buzz angrily from the interior of the bank towards the armored car.

I grabbed Cheshire by the arm and focused on keeping us intangible.

Slugs sparked and dug holes into the car as I hurried us to the solid wall just to the left of the banks main entrance. Cheshire keeping a firm grip on my hand leaned over to see inside.

"Ok, good news!" she shouted over the noise of the gunfire, "only three more bad guys remain. Bad news is one of them is a villain and the two mercs in there have heavy machine guns, plus the hostages!"

"How many?!"

"Fifty four!"

"Any idea who the villain is?"

"Never seen him before! Out of towner!"

I sighed, that would make this twice as dangerous if not foolhardy to attempt alone. The more powersets on field the more likely there would be something on hand to counteract an unknown villain.

"PRT response?"

"Tooooo looooongggggg..."

I whirled around at the odd sound and saw Cheshire... moving and talking slowly? It was as if someone had pressed the slow-mo button...on the Universe? Her head was now starting to move at an utter snail-pace from left to right. I could now also see the bullets standing almost still in mid-air. Time manipulation?

Then the villain trotted out of the bank, cheerfully skipping, and weaving between the bullets, seemingly totally unaffected by the time slow. He was rather short, wearing a black suit not out of place in any board room, with a rather garish neon green tie, and a sad face mask. He carried a silenced pistol and thoughtfully looked around the area.

"Hmmm, now where could the annoying hero be?" he sing songed.

He pulled out an old fashioned fob watch on a chain, flicked it open, snapped it closed and hurried back into the bank.

"... thhheeee clllloooosseest responsssee will be from the Wards." Cheshire finished her sentence at last.

The gunfire stopped.

"Oh heroes!" the villain's voice shouted. "Do come out or the little lady in the pink top gets something she really doesn't want to! It's roughly nine millimeters in size!"

My mind was racing... it was amazing... it was like someone who previously could only move their arms up and down, suddenly found that they could move left and right...

"Shit," Cheshire shook her head, "this guy plays for keeps. He'll really kill."

"No time. He's a _time_ manipulator. I've got a plan."

Cheshire blinked opened and closed her mouth, but I was already inside the bank.

The lobby had seen better days. The floor was littered with spent shell casings, dropped handbags, and other handheld things. The bank customers were all seated to the left side on the floor in clump with their hands covering their ears. I noticed on quite a few that there was blood leaking from their ears... most likely busted eardrums from the gunfire concussion in the enclosed space.

There was one hostage front and center, on her knees, head bowed and shaking with sobs as she felt the end of the villain's silencer pressing against the back of her head. The two big mercs with the smoking machine guns were busy taking turns to reload their weapons, one covering the other.

I stopped about fifteen feet from the hostage, enough that the villain would have to spend time walking to me when he did his time slow or stop trick.

"You have ten seconds! Ten, nine..."

I re-entered the Real in my usual routine.

"Ah, there we go... heroes, so painfully predictable, and such an _interesting_ one you are..."

Then again I felt it happen... the world slowed... stopped. I held my breath, trying my best to appear utterly still as a statue. The villain again skipped forward. "Oh what a sight for sore eyes you are. Could use a bit of a trim downstairs, but oh well..." He reached me and struck out a hand for fondling my left breast...

Fuck no. I flexed that new aspect of my power that I normally used to step into the Subrosa, that this villain had unwittingly revealed to me. It was something that had always been there... I just had never noticed it or known it was possible. Suddenly the world around me became tinged with purple to my eyes, I dodged the groping hand, and suddenly the time stopping villain was the one slowed to a crawl.

I was feeling vindictive for his groping attempt, reached out and broke his offending hand with a twist, stepped behind him, twisted the pistol out of his grip and grabbed his head, giving a quick forward and backward shove with the lightest possible touch of my strength, effectively giving him concussion. I could feel my own Time Stop becoming harder to maintain...as if my hold on Time was slipping through my fingers and I lost strength...

This ability was definitely not something I could maintain for long... I rushed forward to each merc and gave brutal punches to each's face and a hard shove that sent them slowly airborne... then let go... the purple tinge to the world vanished...

The villain screamed in pain, clutching his broken hand and swayed on his feet before collapsing to the ground, unable to maintain his balance. The two mercs flew through the air before crashing against the bars that protected the bank tellers.

There was screaming and more than one of the now former hostages looked ready to bolt for the door.

"Stay where you are!" I punctuated this with my hair rising up and above the bank customers in tentacle formation. "I don't want anyone getting trampled. Until the police and PRT arrives, stay seated!"

Cheshire, still in the Subrosa kept watch over the people so she could alert me to potential runners while I secured the bad guys. I eventually got help when I discovered all the Security guards and bank employees tied up in an adjoining conference room, and released them. Since they knew the bank procedures the best I let them get on with securing the money from the van outside.

The villain and mercs was secured with handcuffs and another set of cuffs around their ankles.

I took no chances with the villain and stood guard over him – even though he was very woozy and struggling to stay awake, and not in any condition to use his abilities, I wasn't take any chances.

"Did you have to break my hand?" he moaned.

"You were going to cop a feel. I don't walk around in the buff as an invitation, asshole."

It was at this point, that the Wards arrived. I glanced at the mounted clock above the door. Not bad considering that Arcadia High (where most Wards went to school) was a few blocks away, and its not like they could all rush out of class without drawing too much suspicion on themselves.

Gallant, Kid Win and Clockblocker.

Gallant was an empathic cape capable of generating concussive blasts of energy that could alter emotions in addition to packing a punch. He was also capable of inflicting specific emotions on his opponents. His silver and gunmetal powersuit was Tinker made and maintained and he cut quite the dashing figure in it. Kid Win was the Tinker of the Brockton Bay Wards, wearing red and gold body armor with a red visor – and was armed with some sort of laser weapon and stun gun, and an actual hoverboard mounted on his back.

Clockblocker wore a skintight white costume, with panels of glossy white armoring placed strategically to not inhibit his movement. The armor had grey clocks on it, some of which was moving, others were stationary. His helmet was a faceless, smooth expanse of white.

He stopped dead on seeing the villain, "Holy shit, you bagged Hourglass." Clockbloker rushed over and touched Hourglass on the head, who was promptly frozen as still as a statue. "How the hell did you catch him? This guy is by is almost by definition un-catchable..."

"Afternoon, Godiva," Gallant appoached me and we gently shook hands. "Though I'm sure you know, I'm Gallant, this is Kid Win and Clockblocker."

"Pleasure to meet you all."

Clockblocker was now standing behind Hourglass, looking rather like he was a soldier in a parade line.

"How long is PRT due?" I asked Gallant.

"We have a bit of a problem there," he said. "They were responding to another emergency just outside of town, when this happened. They're wrapping up as quick as they can, the police will be here first."

"Good, I'm sure you have the fallout well in hand but I can't linger, too dangerous." I gave them a wave and stepped into the Subrosa.

* * *

><p><strong>Welcome to the Parahumans Online Message Boards<strong>  
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**Topic: **  
><strong>In: Boards ► Brockton Bay ► Heroes ►Independents ► Godiva<strong>

**(Showing Page 4 of 6)**

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011:<p>

Bagged a bunch of bad guys today. Cash in transit heist and bank robbery rolled very neatly into one, done by the same crew, led by a villain called Hourglass. First time I was ever shot at, not a nice feeling.

► **Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011:<p>

Damn. It's barely your second week and you've seen more action that I do in a month. Go girl!

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011:<p>

Its amazing what people get up to when they don't think they're being watched or that they leave around when they think they're alone :-

► **Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011<br>That ain't comforting at all, and slightly creepy. You heard it folks, she could be standing over your shoulder as you're typing, seeing all your dirty laundry.

►** Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011<br>LOL, I've seen some of Clockie's dirty laundry folks, and it ain't pretty.

► **Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)**  
>Replied on April 16, 2011<br>Vista! You traitor. In any case, I still want to know how you managed to catch Hourglass, and why did you leave the bank so abruptly?

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 17, 2011<br>Sorry, Clockblocker. Gotta keep my aces. And I can't linger in one place too long, not with the ABB undoubtedly gunning for me.

► **Bagrat (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)**  
>Replied on April 18, 2011<br>Holy crap. For a gal who's invisible, you're sure seeming to be everywhere and totally visible. Got multiple cellphone cam footage here [Link], [Link] and [Link], [NSFW warning] of Godiva hitting ABB stash houses; drugs, guns, illegal booze, all went up in flames. Those hair constructs of yours are badass.

► **Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)**  
>Replied on April 18, 2011<br>Ouch, that totally kicked some ass. Especially that one dude that tried to unload his Uzi on your back. You hit him with a hair fist the size of a car.

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 18, 2011<br>Yeah, that last house was pretty dicey. Got rather angry at what I saw in there. Found a bunch of girls, ranging from sixteen to nineteen, imprisoned in rooms and drugged up. Some were off the street, others straight up kidnapped. They were gonna be addicted and used in brothels here and shipped abroad.

**End of Page.****1****,****2****,****3****,4,****5,6**

**(Showing Page 5 of 6)**

► **Guitarist**  
>Replied on April 19, 2011<br>What the f***? ABB into human trafficking now too.

► **Lolitup**  
>Replied on April 19, 2011<br>Ahh, s***. The ABB have gone insane. Bombs are going off everywhere...

► **Bagrat (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)**  
>Replied on April 20, 2011<br>**Cross posting this on numerous threads to get word out.** Power restored to the majority of the Bay now, after a bomb hit a central distribution hub. Word is that its the villain Tinker Bakuda in Lung's employ is building and planting them. If its found under the category 'infrastructure' it's got some damage; police stations, utility hubs, fire brigades, major roadways. All schools closed. City curfew in effect. And if that's not bad enough, the Docks are smack in the middle of an open turf war at the moment. E88 have struck numerous ABB hangouts there. Protectorate, PRT, New Wave are fully deployed to stop the spillover. Not sure of the timeline, but it looks like E88 invaded first.

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 21, 2011<br>Its insane out there! Do not go near any ABB line gang member. They've got charges implanted in their heads by Bakuda, and can be detonated remotely at any time. They near suicidally charge E88 positions and incursions into the Docks. If the fight doesn't go the ABB's way, the charges are set off and everyone dies. Any hero without ranged abilities of some kind should not engage, stick to supporting the PRT and learn to use a rifle.

► **Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)**  
>Replied on April 22, 2011<br>You want us to start killing people!?

► **Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 22, 2011<br>Talk to me again when you've seen an ABB Suicider (these guys also wear explosive vests) blow up ten innocent people because I sucked with the sniper rifle I appropriated.

► **Bagrat (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)**  
>Replied on April 22, 2011<br>National guard and Protectorate reinforcements are being deployed, just saw APCs rolling into Downtown. Independent heroes from out of town are also answering the call.

► **XxVoidCowboyxX**  
>Replied on April 22, 2011<br>That is... where is the ABB and Bakuda getting all these people!

►** Godiva (Verified Cape) (Independent)**  
>Replied on April 21, 2011<br>She 'recruited' by orchestrating raids of people's homes while they slept, subduing them, and implanting bombs in their heads. She then used those bombs to coerce her victims into kidnapping more. No less than three hundred in total, now. Every single ABB soldier knows that if they don't obey, Bakuda can detonate the bombs. All of them are willing to put their lives on the line, because the alternatives are either certain death or watching their loved ones die for their failure. There are no happy save everyone endings here. And if that isn't bad enough I'd bet she's rigged all the bombs to go off at once in the event her heart rate flatlines.

* * *

><p>I crouched at the lip of a warehouse roof, looking out over a section of the Docks that included the old Trainyard, which was barely in service any more (trains only passed through) , and a bunch of industrial real estate. Rain poured down onto Brockton Bay for the second day now, but it didn't bother me. The rain had forced the fighting to die down somewhat, either side only occasionally sending out a raiding party wearing raincoats. There was no military or police presence fighting in the Docks, as they were just too bogged down defending Downtown and the western sectors. Columns of smoke still rose across the city and I could hear the occasional distant rattle of weapons fire.<p>

Then I heard the characteristic thumb-boom of an explosive going off, not a block away from my perch. A new column of smoke rose into the air. Another explosion, then another, whoever was doing this was going down Morville street.

I took off at a sprint, jumping off the roof and rolled with the landing to preserve my momentum before heading straight towards the explosions.

I crouched beside a building and poked my head around it to get my first look at the problem. I was in the Subrosa, but I treated it as if I wasn't, to practice moving in the Real.

There were two of them. Both were wearing identical costumes; blue man-leotards with broad belts cinched around their waists, skintight white sleeve and leggings. Their hoods were elastic, clinging to their heads so they left only a window for the face, and each sported a single white antenna. Of all colors, their gloves, boots and the balls at the top of their antennae were bubblegum pink. Their faces were obscured by oversize goggles with dark lenses. Other than their costumes, though, they couldn't have been more different. One of the figures was scrawny, with a weak chin and a bad slouch. The other had a sculpted physique, broad shouldered and tall, the lines of his muscles clearly visible through his skintight costume.

They looked like they were straight out of the 8 bit era Bomberman game, and it allowed me to know who I was dealing with. Über and Leet.

Über's power allowed him to develop an ultra high skill with anything he tried his hand at. If he decided to learn Parkour today, he could watch a few vids off the Internet, and by tomorrow he would be outrunning people who had devoted their lives to mastering it. The skills also stayed with him, and it was reflected in his near Olympic physique.

Leet on the other hand was considered to be both the best and the worst Tinker in the world, it depended who you asked. He had access to _all _Tinker tech trees and specialities, he could build anything he put his mind to, something not even Dragon could do. His flaw though was the closer a project was to something he'd made before, the higher the chances of a spectacular misfire or failure. So he could build anything, once, and then never again.

Their whole modus was to imitate video games in real life, streaming their antics for their Youtube audience and subscriber base. With every escapade, they picked a different video game or series, designing their costumes and crimes around it. One day it would be Leet in a Mario costume throwing fireballs while Über was dressed up as Bowser, the two of them breaking into a mint to collect 'coins'. Then a week later, they would have a Grand Theft Auto theme, and they would be driving through the city in a souped up car, ripping off the ABB and beating up hookers.

This time, they were dressed up as Bomberman, each with a large bag slung on their backs. They took from each other's bag two black baseball sized bombs and threw it into a nearby building. There was a dull thump and rumble through the earth and all the windows shattered before a blast wave of flame followed.

They shook their fists with shouts of excitement.

I looked around for what I thought of as the snitch. I finally spotted it as a small round shadow against the backdrop of the cloudy sky. It was a camera, mounted in a golden sphere the size of a tennis ball. It was capable of moving like a hummingbird, staying safe, always recording. I was pretty sure they had a time delay, so events that the camera recorded would play out online in a half hour to an hour.

I could admit I had watched myself, a couple of times, which was how I knew about the 'snitch'. Each time I'd tuned in, I had been surprised to see there were thousands of viewers. I'd stopped because it wasn't feel-good watching. They were real underdogs, struggling to succeed, which made you feel sorry for them, made you want to root for them, until they did something despicable. Then you found yourself looking at them in a negative light, looking down on them, cheering whenever they failed. It felt a little too much like I'd been looking at them in the same way Emma, Madison and Sophia had looked at me, and that had been a major turn-off.

Now they were playing Bomberman, when people were dying everyday to Bakuda's bombs. It was in the worst taste possible, but that was par for the course with these two, and the Internet, being what it was, would watch eagerly.

I was entirely tempted to go out there and give these two a piece of my mind, but something...

I rushed back and put a building between me and the bomberman duo, before emerging into the Real and conjuring my Uplink Mask, the one that had a Heads Up camera feed straight to Cheshire in our Loft HQ.

_'Ah, at last, spotted something Godiva?'_ I returned to the street and peeked out to give her a view. _'Über and Leet. Hmmm.'_

"While this fits their MO, they're doing this in the middle of a warzone," I whispered. "If either an ABB or E88 attack was to hit, they'd be screwed."

_'Let me take a look at their body language... they're liking what they're doing but are definitely not happy about doing it in the middle of a rainstorm, they were hired, by the ABB.'_

"Why not the E88?"

_'Low chance, those bombs are Tinkertech and are too numerous to be the work of Leet, and he wouldn't chance working on bombs and explosives, given what would happen when he inevitably screws up. No... this is fat, juicy bait for heroes – who would be upset at their poor taste of theme. I'm also looking at their website as well, there's no stream of this and nothing scheduled. Show me the rest of the street.'_

I looked up and down the street as requested.

_'Godiva, go invisible, the whole thing is a trap. ABB hiding in buildings and sewers. Its' time.'_

"Hurry."

I dismissed the mask and fell into the Subrosa. Then started climbing the gutter pipe of a nearby building to get to the roof. I couldn't approach on the street because of the water puddles, as making my feet intangible was a very bad idea. I flared my hair, forming numerous limbs that took over the job of my legs and lifted me up into the air by a foot. I was far from mastering this trick but it was serviceable. More importantly, gaps between buildings, whether higher or lower were no longer obstacles.

I got ahead of the villain duo and briefly let my feet touch down on the lip of a building, and jumped, using my hair to provide a further upward boost. As I arced through the air I debated whether or not to just hit them both immediately and take them out... but that would assuredly bring the ABB immediately into the picture as well, which wasn't ideal.

So I landed ten feet in front of them, the splash of water from my feet immediately drawing their attention. I turned so that my sideways profile was facing them and emerged into Real, my hair flailing, whipping and even orbiting me in various threatening forms. My Uplink Mask was on and I allowed my the hair covering my face to dissipate somewhat.

I expected a variety of reactions but they immediately got big smiles on their faces and clapped earnestly, nodding their heads in appreciation.

"Awesome entrance," Über's voice made him sound like the guy who narrated trailers for action movies or late night commercials. A skill his power had also allowed him to learn. He was the sort of person who proclaimed, announced, broadcasted and declared. Overdramatic, intense about everything he said, no matter how mundane.

"Perfect angle of presentation," Leet declared holding his fingers up as if he was a film director trying to visualize the borders of a camera shot. "Even the rain now is perfect, wet skin, damn that's hot, ecchi anime made real..."

_'Easy Godiva, they're just trying to get under you skin, so to speak, and stall for the ABB to reposition,'_ Cheshire advised.

"Über and Leet, I'm Godiva, and the Docks are getting fucked up enough without you two playing your games. Bomberman? Really?"

"You know your old school games, I'm impressed," Leet grinned.

"So which way is this going to go?" I raised both hands palms up as if I was weighing something in them. "The hard way or the high way."

"No, no, no, that's not how the movie goes," Über protested. "Switch says 'It's our way or the highway.'"

"I think she means the hard way is her kicking our ass, Über, the highway referring to us leaving."

I shrugged, "Pretty much."

Über snorted, "As if a newbie was going to kick our ass by herself."

"Yeah, all it'll take is one little bomb and your naked ass is toast," Leet held up a black bomb and brandished it threateningly at me.

I smiled behind my mask and settled easily into the Mountain stance and gave a come hither gesture straight out of the Matrix to Über.

He took the invitation and charged me. There was no way I was actually going to allow it to come to a martial arts contest, sure I could Brute him, but on a pure skill level he was way out of my league. I let him get close... then brought together four human sized arms out of hair that blocked his first strike, then the follow up with the kick, allowing the third and fourth arms to slam into Über's kidney and face.

The villain rolled with both hits, tumbling to get out of my range. That would have worked normally.

Über got to his feet only to meet a two palm strikes to the face and abdomen that sent him sprawling. Leet was discovering the problem with an explosive as a close quarter weapon, he didn't dare throw one for risk of Über getting caught in the explosion. Then he somehow drew sword from his back out of nowhere and charged me.

He was met with another two pairs of arms that evaded the sword slash, got under his guard to delivered multiple palm strikes that had the Tinker reeling back in retreat.

_'Keep stringing them along, we want to milk this for every second,'_ Cheshire advised.

Über charged again doing some fancy evasion moves straight out of a Hollywood action movie. It was awesome skill to look at, but this wasn't hollywood, and a hair tentacle plucked at him as he was twirling through the air to make him land horribly, eliciting a yelp of pain.

Leet tried again with the sword and that it actually managed to partially cut into one of the hair arms attacking him made me raise an eyebrow... that was most certainly not a normal sword.

_'It's a hard light holographic sword with molecular sharpness.'_

Any triumph Leet felt at damaging my hair evaporated as soon as the 'injured' arm retreated and merely regen'd its 'wound'. "Awww, come on, that's bullshit," he gasped.

I merely stood with weight on my right hip, giving me a casual lean, and pretended to examine my nails. Yeah, I was probably hamming it up a bit for the duo's camera – though they weren't live streaming, there's no way there weren't recording.

They next tried attacking me together, coming from opposite sides, then retreated with a new set of bruises for their trouble.

We kept up this dance for nearly two minutes and by that point Leet's swings of his sword were very clumsy and he was huffing and puffing for breath. Über had no problems in terms of stamina at all, but he was wincing with pain of his numerous bruises.

'_First mark, Godiva.'_

That was my queue and I sighed theatrically, shook my head, "Boring." Abruptly the arms battling the villain duo split apart into numerous tentacles that snaked around limbs and lifted them into the air and reeled them in to me. I flicked my fingers and was holding four pairs of handcuffs. A few seconds later and they were hog tied, arms behind their back and legs cuffed together.

"Perhaps we can better entertain you then."

From a nearby doorway a woman emerged, in the same outfit Über and Leet were wearing. The difference was that she wore a gas-mask style fixture over her lower face, and the lenses of her goggles were red, not black. The woman's mask seemed to take what she said and replay everything in a robotic, monotone hiss, "I didn't have much hope that these two were going to achieve anything, but was hoping Über could at least injure you. How disappointing."

_'Fuck me. That's Bakuda... what is she doing here... oh crap, Godiva..._'

Following the Tinker was a man, he was a little over six feet, though, which put him head and shoulders above Bakuda. He had an ornate metal mask over his face, and wasn't wearing a shirt, despite the chill and rain. Sprawling tattoos covered his body from the neck down, all depicting dragons from Eastern mythology. An awful current of dread snaked its way up and down my spine and settled in my stomach.

"Lung."

888888888888888888


End file.
